Emails Revive Issues Regarding Clinton Foundation And Clinton Led State Department

Allegations of influence peddling by Clinton Foundation donors are being rehashed thanks to the release of a new batch of emails.

Hillary Bill Chelsea Clinton

A newly released batch of State Department emails are reviving questions that first came up last year regarding the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during the years that Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, raising questions that could dog the Clinton campaign even as we head into the height of the Presidential campaign:

WASHINGTON — A new batch of State Department emails released Tuesday showed the close and sometimes overlapping interests between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.

The documents raised new questions about whether the charitable foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department, a charge that Mrs. Clinton has faced in the past and has always denied.

In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the United States ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor’s interests there.

In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Mrs. Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request.

Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, which has been shadowed for 17 months by the controversy over the private email server she used exclusively while at the State Department, said that the emails released Tuesday had no bearing on the foundation’s work.

The State Department turned the new emails over to a conservative advocacy group, Judicial Watch, as part of a lawsuit that the group brought under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents included 44 emails that were not among some 55,000 pages of emails that Mrs. Clinton had previously given to the State Department, which she said represented all her “work-related” emails. The document release centers on discussions between Mrs. Clinton’s aides and Clinton Foundation executives about a number of donors and associates with interests before the State Department.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, charged that Mrs. Clinton “hid” the documents from the public because they appeared to contradict her official pledge in 2009 to remove herself from Clinton Foundation business while leading the State Department.

The documents indicate, he said in a telephone interview, that “the State Department and the Clinton Foundation worked hand in hand in terms of policy and donor effort.”

“There was no daylight between the two under Mrs. Clinton, and this was contrary to her promises,” he added.

A number of the email exchanges released Tuesday included Huma Abedin, who was a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton at the State Department and later worked at the Clinton Foundation.

In April 2009, Douglas J. Band, who led the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, emailed Ms. Abedin and Cheryl D. Mills, another top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, for help with a donor.

Mr. Band wrote that he needed to connect Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who was one of the foundation’s top donors, with someone at the State Department to talk about his interests in Lebanon.

“It’s jeff feltman,” Ms. Abedin answered, referring to Jeffrey Feltman, who was the American ambassador to Lebanon at the time. “I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff.”

Mr. Band asked her to call Mr. Chagoury immediately if possible. “This is very important,” he wrote.

In a separate email exchange, Mr. Band passed along to Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills a request for “a favor” from an associate who had recently been on a Clinton Foundation trip to Haiti and was apparently seeking work at the State Department.

The State Department deleted much of the information about the associate, including his name and the outcome of the job referral, in turning over the emails to Judicial Watch.

In one undeleted section, however, Mr. Band wrote that it was “important to take care of” the associate’s request. A short time later, Ms. Abedin wrote back to say: “We all have him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.”

In any of themselves, the situations uncovered by these emails, which essentially consist of one former aide at the Foundation looking for a job at the State Department and a Lebanese billionaire with significant investments in Nigeria who had donated to the Foundation on multiple occasions and was seeking access to the State Department to talk to, aren’t entirely unusual in the grand scheme of things. However, this isn’t the first time that the Foundation and its links to the Clinton State Department have become an issue in the Presidential race. Back in the Spring of 2015 when Clinton first entered the race for President, a number of revelations came out that purported to show a relationship between donations to the Clinton Foundation and policy positions taken by Foggy Bottom while Clinton was Secretary of State. Back then,  The New York Times first reported about a book detailing donations to the Clinton Foundation that alleged that Clinton had changed position and granted State Department favors to business interests who had donated to the Foundation over the year. That report was quickly followed by another report regarding Foundation donors involved in the business dealings of a Russian energy company that was involved in a deal to purchase an American company that mined uranium in the United States and elsewhere.. Soon after, the Foundation itself announced that it was filing amended tax returns for multiple years due to the fact that information regarding foreign donations was not correctly reported and shortly after this we learned that the Foundation had failed to report more than 1,100 donations from foreign sources during the time that Clinton was Secretary of State.

For the most part, this story has been relatively quiet since those initial revelations back in the spring of 2015 and, instead, we’ve heard more about the potential misuse of classified information on Clinton’s private email server and issues related to the Benghazi attack. With those issues essentially behind us after the announcement that no charges would be pursued based on the F.B.I. investigation of the issues related to the server and the issuance of the the rather innocuous final report of the House Select Committee established to investigate the Benghazi attack, though, one can expect that questions regarding the Clinton Foundation are likely to move to the top of the list of the things that the Clinton campaign will be asked to deal with between now and the election. If they’ve learned anything from the previous investigations, the campaign will use the opportunity to learn from the mistakes they made in the rather bungled responses to initial questions regarding the server and classified information to get in front of an issue that has the potential to blunt the momentum that Clinton has had in the polls since the Democratic National Convention, because it’s unlikely that this issue is simply going to go away. It would also be worthwhile to get in front of the story in any case since the future of the Clinton Foundation and its relationships with business interests around the world are likely to become a focus of attention as it becomes more likely that Clinton will win the election. At that point, both Hillary and Bill Clinton will be forced to decide exactly what’s going to happen to the Foundation while Clinton is serving as President of the United States and what steps they will take to ensure that there is not undue influence or access given to Foundation donors. It would be best to get that question answered sooner rather than later, and to avoid the unforced errors that could blunt was has turned out so far to be a very favorable election climate for Clinton so far.

FILED UNDER: 2016 Election, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Hal_10000 says:

    Huh. Must be time for Trump to say something stupid again.

  2. grumpy realist says:

    I think we’re at some point going to get to the point where “email” and “Clinton” in the same sentence will result in a stampede for the exits by everyone except the Info-wars conspiracy types.

  3. bill says:

    what’s this, a “non-trump” blog?!
    her voters don’t care what she does, she’s immune to laws and rational thinking. anyone with a brain knows they sold influence like beer at a ballgame. that you folks put on blinders to it is telling.
    aside from all that obvious stuff with the foundation and bill getting sweet $$ for “speeches” ….has anyone remembered that “big banks, wall st, hedge fund guys” were all evil just 4 yrs ago? they figured out that they could throw money at hillary and the questions would go away- and they were spot-on!

  4. humanoid.panda says:

    In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Mrs. Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request.

    THE HORROR!!!

    Seriously, did anyone who pretends to be aghast at this had ever worked in any kind of organization not consisting of hermits who took a vow of absolute poverty?

  5. gVOR08 says:

    @humanoid.panda: Ah, but this sort of thing falls under IOKIYAR. Don’t you understand it’s an outrage when Democrats indulge in political business as usual?

  6. Jen says:

    aren’t entirely unusual in the grand scheme of things.

    Exactly.

    Someone refresh my memory…where are we on the Trump Foundation donations to the FL and TX attorneys general during Trump U lawsuits issue?

  7. Andrew says:

    @Jen:

    Apples and Orange.

    Clinton using her powers to help her fellow public worker is extremely frowned upon in every circle that do not like the Clintons.
    Trump is a private citizen allowed to buy government employees for his own gain.

    One is an abuse of power, and the other is…um, the best power money can buy!

  8. grumpy realist says:

    @Andrew: Yes, let’s have some investigation into exactly how suitable Trump’s kids were for the positions they were employed into, shall we?

  9. An Interested Party says:

    her voters don’t care what she does, she’s immune to laws and rational thinking.

    Hmm, that sounds like you and your fellow travelers who excuse every crazy thing that Trump says…I mean, talk about being immune to rational thinking! Since this is a binary choice, I’ll bet more people will vote for her with all of her flaws as opposed to him and his repulsiveness…

  10. Tillman says:

    Honestly more concerned with the Clinton campaign courting Henry Kissinger and John Negroponte than this particular batch of emails.

  11. Bob@Youngstown says:

    @bill: Jenos by another handle.

  12. Raoul says:

    As far as I can tell- nobody got a job, nobody got an interview and Hillary was not directly involved in any of this. I can only imagine if we could see all emails from one person one could speculate just about anything. In fact, the real surprise here is the lack of damming information. Maybe that will come out later but as of know all we got is a ham sandwich.

  13. DrDaveT says:

    @bill:

    anyone with a brain knows they sold influence like beer at a ballgame

    Even if this were true, it would mean (at best) that she is only two orders of magnitude more desirable as a President than Trump, rather than the 3 or 4 she might otherwise claim.

    Why is this so hard to see? I repeat my earlier challenge: list ALL of the worst failings and shortcomings of Hillary Clinton. Then, for each one, objectively score Donald Trump on exactly the same scale. I’ll say this for the Donald — he’s a perfectionist. He’s worse in every single dimension.

  14. Guarneri says:

    Good evening!!

    I’ve been traveling. What happened? More yoga pose and wedding plan emails get released? How about Obama? Bribed any terrorist sponsor countries lately?

    Aw, who cares. Trump doesn’t like babies.

  15. An Interested Party says:

    I’ve been traveling.

    Yes, I’m sure that catching and riding the bus is time-consuming…

  16. anjin-san says:

    @bill:

    she’s immune to laws

    What laws has Hillary broken? Please be specific…

  17. Tillman says:

    @Guarneri: actually, the line now is Obama founded ISIS.

  18. Tyrell says:

    @DrDaveT: How did things get to this point ? I often find myself thinking back wistfully to the leaders that we had at a time not so long ago: Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, Dirksen, Connally, Fulbright, Ervin. These
    were leaders who put their heads together and got things done. Johnson was the most effective politician in modern times. He had one of the best cabinets: Rusk, Ball, Valenti, Bundy, McNamara, Udall, Reedy, Katzenbach. Things worked and things got done. What we had back then was statesmanship.
    Leaders put the country first. Most of our leaders then had a
    part in WW II.
    Things today just don’t feel the same. People are disunited. Leaders are dug in.

  19. Davebo says:

    @Tyrell:

    While I’m a fan of Johnson seriously, you’re dreaming of a past that really never was. The whole comment has a bit of “get off my lawn” vibe.

  20. gVOR08 says:

    @Tyrell: What happened was:
    • The Civil Rights Act
    • The Southern Strategy enabled by the CRA
    • The subsequent flip of red and blue states with the loss of southern conservative Democrats and liberal northern Republicans
    • The Conservative Entertainment Complex
    • The election of a black President
    • The explicit decision by congressional Republicans to deny any cooperation to said President
    • The Great Recession
    • The explosion of funding and lobbying
    • Demographic shifts
    • The Koch et al funded creation of the Tea Party

    Quoting a poly sci prof, there are reasons things are the way they are. What did you think happened?

  21. Paul Hooson says:

    Hillary must have angels above watching over her, because first Trump’s outrageous “2nd Amendment” folks statement backlash and then that crazy Trump Tower climber gave her cover today from much of her possible damage from this Email story. I count four recent missteps by Clinton, each day overshadowed by the more bizarre conduct of Donald Trump as her saving grace each of those days. That sounds like divine intervention to me.

  22. michael reynolds says:

    @Guarneri:

    What happened while you were gone?

    1) Trump suggested the Democratic candidate be shot.
    2) Trump invited Russia to illegally hack email to interfere with an American election.
    3) Trump pre-emptively surrendered Europe to Putin.
    4) Trump put out an economic plan even his toadies couldn’t defend.
    5) Republican Senator Susan Collins vomited her disgust for Trump all over the WaPo.
    6) Trump’s poll numbers fell like a cinderblock tossed off Trump tower.

    And racist, misogynist creeps pretended that Hillary’s email was the real issue.

    There’s much, much, much more depending on how long you’ve been away.

  23. Jen says:

    @Tyrell:

    I often find myself thinking back wistfully to the leaders that we had at a time not so long ago: Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey, Dirksen, Connally, Fulbright, Ervin. These
    were leaders who put their heads together and got things done.

    Certainly, they did. They also had a lot of backroom dealing, arm-twisting, political favors to dole out, etc. You can get a lot done in that type of environment.

    It’s normal to view the past through positive lenses, but I don’t really think there ever was–or ever will be–a Golden Age of Politics.

  24. MarkedMan says:

    Somebody who worked at the foundation was looking for a job at the State Department and Hillary’s aide put them in touch with the Personnel Department. The horrors!

  25. Jen says:

    @Paul Hooson: You aren’t kidding…

    Last night in FL, Trump was nattering on about Mateen’s father sitting behind Clinton at a rally. Who was sitting behind Trump as he was saying this? Cong. Mark Foley.

    Amazing.
    http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/10/politics/donald-trump-mark-foley-campaign-rally/index.html

  26. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Bob@Youngstown: Jenos by another handle.

    Sod off, you lying git.

    And I am AMAZED that Doug managed to post about something beyond “oh, look, here’s another poll that looks bad for Trump.” But I am not completely blown away, as he managed to overlook a few key developments. For example, Iran recently executed one of their top nuclear scientists for treason. It turns out that he was on our payroll, and giving us a lot of useful information. And it also turns out that Hillary and her aides were discussing him in her emails, by name.

    Sadly, no one thought to mark “here’s the real name of one of our top agents in Iran” as “classified,” and The Smartest And Most Qualified Woman In The World isn’t smart enough to recognize that such information should be kept extremely secret unless someone tells her, so that means that his identification and death were tragic and completely unforeseeable events. Give her yet another pass.

    Also, Doug, nice picture for the article. Did you notice the “Clinton University” logo? That reminded me of Laureate University. They hired Bill as “honorary chancellor” for over $3 million a year. Shortly after Bill donned his robes, the State Department started giving Laureate’s founder and president millions. Too bad you missed that story.

    Then there’s the father of the Orlando anti-gay terrorist showing up at a Hillary event. That in itself isn’t that big a deal, but he spent the whole time grinning and cheering from a very prominent place of honor. He didn’t seem saddened or ashamed of his son’s actions, but almost gleeful.

    Finally, there are some very interesting stories about Hillary’s health floating around, but I hear that there’s yet another poll to talk about, and Trump’s about to make another off-the-cuff bad joke, so I suspect you won’t have the time to talk about any of this stuff. We understand that you have to have your priorities.

  27. Jenos Idanian says:

    Oh, and in response to the latest disastrous developments in the Iran nuclear deal, Obama said that it’s no big deal, even Israel’s on board with it now.

    And then Israel said “WTF, dude? We said no such thing!”

    But don’t worry, Doug. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Sarah Palin will say or do something you can talk about instead.

  28. Jenos Idanian says:

    Oh, and the FBI wanted to open an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department said “nuh-uh” and put the kibosh on that.

  29. C. Clavin says:

    Jenos is his full-on conspiracy-theorist swamp-fever is a thing of beauty to watch.

  30. C. Clavin says:

    In and of themselves, the situations uncovered by these emails…aren’t entirely unusual in the grand scheme of things.

    Exactly…anyone who has their panties in a twist about these emails has never actually done any work in any kind of real business…or is simply a lying partisan hack.
    Which means, of course, Republicans will conduct another 9 investigations into Clinton over this. Probably even appoint a Special Prosecutor.

  31. Slugger says:

    @Tyrell: My recollections are not entirely congruent with yours. I remember an dead-end war in Vietnam, riots burning American cities, racial unrest, the streets eruping in violence during the 1968 Democratic convention, the murders of civil rights workers, assassinations of MLK and RFK, and alienation of young people. We did have great music, though.

  32. KM says:

    @Jenos:

    And it also turns out that Hillary and her aides were discussing him in her emails, by name.

    Did it ever occur to you then that all this kerfuffle about Clinton emails might have helped get that man killed? I mean, kinda suspicious timing, no? Republicans open their mouth for Cheap Excoriation Attempt #35275 and boom! dead spy. It’s almost like bringing attention to said emails over and over again then insisting on throwing it all out there might have lead his killers to him…. Presumably these were the emails that weren’t part of the “classified” mess so the mention must have been deemed harmless in context (discussing nuclear sanctions maybe???). However if you have nutjobs who keep screaming “Look at this! Look at this!!”…. well, looks like somebody did and got paranoid. “Amiri ? Our Amiri ?? How many can there be? Crap, get rid of him just to be safe” Behold one dead scientist.

    Makes for just as plausible a scenario as the one Trump’s weaving. If true, then what do Republicans have against undercover spies anyways? This is at least the second time they’ve f-ed one over for political gain. Why do you people hate America?

  33. Bob@Youngstown says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    Sod off, you lying git.

    Snappy come back

  34. MarkedMan says:

    A billionaire Clinton Foundation owner with business interests in Lebanon was put in touch with the ambassador to Lebanon. The horrors!

  35. Mikey says:

    @Jenos Idanian: There’s no evidence–absolutely none–that any mention of this guy in a couple State Department unclassified e-mails led to his execution. He was, without a doubt, not long for this world years before those e-mails were made public. News stories at the time he returned (mid-2010) detailed what he’d done and even stated the U. S. government had paid him $5 million for information. The CIA people he was working with warned him if he returned he’d hang, but he went back anyway.

  36. Bob@Youngstown says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    And it also turns out that Hillary and her aides were discussing him (Amiri) in her emails, by name.

    Can you link to the actual emails where Clinton aides were mentioning Amiri “by name” (not just some allegations by Cotton)?
    As best as I can tell, Amiri is NOT mentioned by name by Clinton aides. The only “by name” use was by a CNN national public broadcast.

  37. Slugger says:

    Let me add a serious remark. This election year has not given us a contest between two paladins who forthrightly represent different views without any trace of selfishness. Hillary who certainly has many negatives is going to win since Trump has shown himself to be beyond the imagining of the most sarcastic political joke writers. It is important that we scrutinize all of her actions as we should be scrutinizing every elected official. We must avoid destructive negativism when we do this, and we all need to be especially wary about the people who we think our on our own side.

  38. Kylopod says:

    @bill:

    her voters don’t care what she does, she’s immune to laws and rational thinking.

    As she put it earlier this year, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

    Oh, wait…

  39. gVOR08 says:

    Hunker down guys. That the Russians or Wikileaks or somebody has an October surprise from hacking her and the DNC is the only shred of hope the GOPs have.They can either talk policy or talk emails, so expect three months of non-stop Hillary’s emails.

    Think there’s a prayer the Russian haven’t hacked Trump’s email on the off chance he could get elected? And the RNC? Maybe we could buy from them all those emails the W admin put on the RNC server and then “lost”.

  40. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Jenos Idanian: @bill:

    Three months ago Trump supporters were telling us that he is great because he says it like it is, and doesn’t care about this PC crap.

    And now you all are pissed that his “telling it like it is” is generating headlines?

    Boo f*cking hoo.

  41. MarkedMan says:

    Wait a minute. The Iranian nuclear scientist defected to the US. The CIA deliberately (I assume) burned him by making it public about how they had relocated him and he was cooperating. Then, after we got everything we wanted and he was on his own in the US getting lonely, the Iranians got to him and started convincing him that if he only came back to Iraq all would be forgiven. He believed them. He got on the plane of his own free will and flew back, whereupon the Iranians announced it at a news conference. They immediately threw him in jail where I’m sure they got every ounce of info they could out of him before they killed him. All of this took place in very visible public over the course of 5-6 years.

    And in the right wing fever swamp, it was Hillary’s email that got him killed. Got it.

  42. anjin-san says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    there are some very interesting stories about Hillary’s health floating around,

    Hey Jenos, I hear that Romney saved a drowning man – can you fill us in?

  43. anjin-san says:

    @MarkedMan:

    it was Hillary’s email that got him killed.

    I think that Julius Caesar dude was in her emails too. She got him killed…

  44. Jen says:

    It is astonishing that this even made the news, and then where Trump is concerned there is stuff like this floating around: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/11/is-a-crook-hiding-in-donald-trump-s-taxes.html

    Unreal. I wish every major media outlet would boycott him until he releases his returns, denying him the attention he craves. Unfortunately, that would likely send his polling numbers up because they wouldn’t be covering the Stupid of the Day.

  45. grumpy realist says:

    @Jen: What’s most aggravating is that all the unspoken rules that the right continues to lambast Hillary for supposedly breaking are totally ignored when it’s Trump. Release taxes? Whatever for?

    The fact that every other president since Nixon has done so just flies over their head. The fact that there’s probably some pretty slimy stuff in there also flies over their head. For them, Trump is golden and can do no wrong.

  46. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @Bob@Youngstown: And more importantly, I think he falsely accused you. As I read your comment, you weren’t accusing Jenos of using “bill” as yet another false faced pseudonym of a faceless internet troll, you were simply drawing a comparison between the blather of two people who say silly things under the cover of anonymity. But did Jenos ever stop to think about that possibility? It seems not. He just shot off in the same kind of mindless rage that he accuses others of.

    I think that Jenos could do with a little practicing of what he preaches!

  47. Jenos Idanian says:

    @michael reynolds: 1) Trump suggested the Democratic candidate be shot.
    2) Trump invited Russia to illegally hack email to interfere with an American election.

    You’re getting your fantasy confused with reality again.

    1) Trump made a stupid, off-the-cuff joke. Meanwhile, the vast majority of violence (actual, real, bloody violence) has been perpetrated against Trump supporters, and the only known assassination attempt was against Trump.

    2) The server in question has been wiped (“with a cloth”) and in the physical possession of the FBI, who have it physically separated from the internet. The only way Russia (or anyone else) could “hack” it now is if they physically invaded the FBI facility where it now is. So if anyone were to release the information on that server, it was because they already had hacked it, when it was under Hillary’s control.

    And back on topic, all this stuff now being released about the Clinton Foundation was from the emails that Hillary did NOT turn over when ordered to. They were among the thousands she deleted as “personal.” Which means that either 1) Hillary lied about turning over all work-related emails, or 2) she considered the interactions between her Foundation and her State Department as “personal.” And since we know that Hillary never lies about things to cover her ass, then while she was working for State, she was really doing her personal stuff.

  48. Mikey says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    1) Trump made a stupid, off-the-cuff joke.

    Yeah, that’s what we want from a President–one “stupid, off-the-cuff joke” after another. It’s getting tiresome after a couple months, how would we expect to survive four years of it?

    How many times are you willing to excuse the inexcusable, to spin the unspinnable? Trump is, quite obviously, entirely unsuited to the office of the Presidency. No objective observer can conclude otherwise. What is it with you Trumpkins and your credulous, unwavering support for this utterly unqualified ignoramus?

    (Seen on the internet: Trump should change his campaign slogan from “Make America Great Again” to “What I really meant was…”)

  49. wr says:

    @Jenos Idanian: “Sadly, no one thought to mark “here’s the real name of one of our top agents in Iran” as “classified,” and The Smartest And Most Qualified Woman In The World isn’t smart enough to recognize that such information should be kept extremely secret unless someone tells her, so that means that his identification and death were tragic and completely unforeseeable events.”

    Quite possibly because he had been named multiple times in the Washington Post two years before any of these email were sent — as confirmed by the WaPo’s fact checker, who called this accusation the dumbest thing he’d ever seen on the internet.

    What a surprise that you are the one passing it on here.

  50. wr says:

    @Mikey: Jenos loves Trump, because at heart Trump is an internet trolll just like him — someone with no interest in fact or truth who is willing to say anything and everything as long as it brings an emotional response from someone. And you can see it in his desperate — pathetic, really — defenses of Trump how crushed Baby Jenos is to discover that, contrary to his expectations, Americans as a whole loathe Trump. Because if he accepts that Trump is hated, he might have to face the fact that he really is the zero everyone knows him to be.

  51. anjin-san says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    Trump made a stupid, off-the-cuff joke.

    Let’s see what Ronald Reagan’s daughter thinks…

    To Donald Trump: I am the daughter of a man who was shot by someone who got his inspiration from a movie, someone who believed if he killed the President the actress from that movie would notice him. Your glib and horrifying comment about “Second Amendment people” was heard around the world. It was heard by sane and decent people who shudder at your fondness for verbal violence. It was heard by your supporters, many of whom gleefully and angrily yell, “Lock her up!” at your rallies. It was heard by the person sitting alone in a room, locked in his own dark fantasies, who sees unbridled violence as a way to make his mark in the world, and is just looking for ideas. Yes, Mr. Trump, words matter. But then you know that, which makes this all even more horrifying.

    Patti Davis

    I guess she lost you at “sane and decent people”…

  52. Matt says:

    @Tyrell:Every single one of those people you mentioned existed in an era where it took days if not weeks for news to travel across the country…

    News now instantly travels from the deepest part of the remotest jungle in the world all the way back to the USA in a matter of seconds..

    Technology happened and your saintly heroes were just lucky their era was before the internet.

  53. Jenos Idanian says:

    The internet never forgets. Here’s John Kerry “joking” about killing then-president George W. Bush. And he was so scorned and denounced about that remark that they exiled him to be Secretary of State.

    And that “Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary” bullshit? Here are Trump’s actual words:

    “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said, staring directly into the cameras during a news conference. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

    As noted (and repeatedly ignored here), at the point Trump said that, the server had been wiped and turned over to the FBI, which had it isolated from the internet. The only way Russia could “find” those emails was if the server had been hacked, and Russia could get to the hacked files. “Inviting Russia to commit espionage” is pure bullshit spin.

    To repeat an all-too-frequent point, if Trump (or some other person) is so bad, why the hell do you have to make up shit about them? Can’t you just tell the truth and let their horribleness just speak for itself?

    But back on the topic at hand… the Clinton Foundation’s main role is to collect money to support the Clintons. It’s secondary role is to collect money for the Clinton crime cartel and keep their cronies and lackies handy while the Clintons are temporarily out of office, and they can’t be put on the public payroll.

    And, occasionally, when they have a few bucks to spare, they do some charitable work. But since they don’t do it very often, and they don’t try very hard at it, they really, really suck at that.

  54. Mikey says:

    @Jenos Idanian: Just can’t keep yourself from shilling for the abominable, can you?

    I have to give you some credit, though–it takes real balls to come out again and again, apparently hoping against hope to somehow conjure something positive from the inane pronouncements of a man who’s quite clearly the worst major-party Presidential candidate in American history. Props to you for bravely standing athwart all good sense and reason, yelling “STOP!”

  55. Wr says:

    @Jenos Idanian: Shorter Jenos: To quote Trump directly is lying about him.

  56. Mikey says:
  57. Bob@Youngstown says:

    @Bob@Youngstown: @Jenos Idanian:
    Asking again: Can you link to the actual emails where Clinton aides were mentioning Amiri “by name” (not just some allegations by Cotton)?

    and

    Jenos sez: “the Clinton Foundation’s main role is to collect money to support the Clintons. It’s secondary role is to collect money for the Clinton crime cartel”

    Have you been able to prove that charge? Has anyone?

  58. anjin-san says:

    Poor Jenos. A fifth tier apologist for Donald Trump, AKA “America’s Biggest Loser”

    Hate to break it to you pal, but your boy is getting punk slapped by a girl…

  59. michael reynolds says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    I’m curious. Are you being paid to burn whatever tiny shred of credibility you had left? Are you actively convincing 100% of people who read you that you’re a liar, an imbecile, and a toady. . . for free?

    Please, tell me you’re on someone’s payroll. Because otherwise we’re just all witnessing a sort of virtual suicide.

  60. Jenos Idanian says:

    @michael reynolds: I’m curious. Are you being paid to burn whatever tiny shred of credibility you had left? Are you actively convincing 100% of people who read you that you’re a liar, an imbecile, and a toady. . . for free?

    What is this, like the eighteenth time you’ve pronounced that I’ve lost my last shred of credibility? Are you saying that you granted me any prior to this precise moment?

    You need a LOT more practice if you want to play Concern Troll, ‘cuz you suck at it.

    But back on the topic… just how lousy a “charitable organization” is the Clinton Foundation? Pretty bad.

    And in other “unimportant news,” it’s now come out that Cheryl Mills, who was Hillary’s Chief of Staff at State, took a day off from work to go to New York and help interview candidates for CEO of the Clinton Foundation. Which, apparently, didn’t conflict with Hillary’s declaration that there would be a wall of separation between her work at State and the Clinton Foundation, and she would avoid even the appearance of impropriety with regards to the Foundation.

    The biggest problem Hillary would have as president is remembering just who bought her when, and for how much, should the inevitable happen and there’s a conflict between two of her purchasers.

    At this point, the best model she should follow is the plot of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers.” If she loses, she’s off the hook to all those donors. But if she wins, they’ll all expecting a healthy return on their investments, and there’s no way she can keep them all happy.

  61. Bob@Youngstown says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    Jenos sez:” just how lousy a “charitable organization” is the Clinton Foundation? Pretty bad.”

    Another opinion piece???, let’s see some actual proof.

    If the Clinton Foundation is as corrupt as you suggest, has that been adjudicated ?

    & BTW, I’d still like to see those emails where “Clinton aides mention (Amiri) by name”

    PUOSU

  62. Concerned UK Citizen says:

    Emails emails emails……

    I’m sick to death hearing about what they did, didn’t contain; whether they were/weren’t classified etc etc.

    Move on!

    If that is all DT’s supporters and the RP have to beat HC over the head,, then their chances of winning in November fall from slim to none.

    Also, I cannot believe DT’s supporters believe HC is dishonest/untrustworthy.

    Have they looked at who they are supporting???

    It’s obvious to me that their sole source of “news’ is Fox,

    We in the UK just cannot believe that a political party would let man with Trumps record represent them for the highest office in the world.

    A man like him would have been kicked out of the major political parties here in a heartbeat.

  63. Concerned UK Citizen says:

    We in the UK cannot believe that a man with Trumps record would even be allowed by a major party to represent then in the race for the highest office in the world.

  64. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Bob@Youngstown: Here’s a report that three different FBI field offices wanted to open an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, and three times the Justice Department said no.

    And here is Senator Cotton talking about Hillary and our dead Iranian friend. If I was incorrect, then I demand to be held to the Hillary standard — unless you have incontrovertible proof that I deliberately acted to speak an untruth, you must dismiss any misstatements as harmless.

  65. David M says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    I deliberately acted to speak an untruth

    You posted words, ergo lies

  66. Jenos Idanian says:

    @David M: Shut up, you racist, sexist homophobe.

    (Today I am self-identifying as a black lesbian. But that is subject to change.)

  67. anjin-san says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    But back on the topic… just how lousy a “charitable organization” is the Clinton Foundation? Pretty bad.

    The New York Post – wow, you just blew us all out of the water with that cite. We will probably need a few days to lick our wounds.

    Do you have any updates on the Kardashian girls you can share with the class?

  68. anjin-san says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    And here is Senator Cotton talking about Hillary and our dead Iranian friend.

    Hmm. A highly partisan Republican trying to make a name for himself is trashing Hillary. In other news, sky blue & water wet.

    Tell ya what Skippy. Admit that even multiple GOP Congressional investigations have shown that you were utterly full of shit about Benghazi, and maybe you will have a minuscule – a very small shred – of credibility to be considered someone who is able to contribute to a grown up discussion of politics.

  69. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    @anjin-san: No, he won’t; it’s too late for that.

  70. wr says:

    @Jenos Idanian: “What is this, like the eighteenth time you’ve pronounced that I’ve lost my last shred of credibility? Are you saying that you granted me any prior to this precise moment?”

    Hate to agree with you over Michael, but you are absolutely right here — you have no shred of credibility and you never have. Everything you type is a lie or a deliberate misunderstanding. You will say anything as long as it will get you attention, and you’ve learned that the things that get the most attention are the vilest and most stupid.

    Don’t know what MR was thinking here.

  71. Jenos Idanian says:

    OK, so I don’t get to use the Hillary defense. Would it help if I had a history of major neurological injury?

    But back on topic… despite the Justice Department blocking a criminal investigation into the Clinton Foundation, there’s still a few more going on. And in New York, it could get real.