Hillary Clinton clearly believes that rules do not apply to her, and “this is precisely the kind of governance” we can expect were she to be elected president, warns a Wall Street Journal editorial.

That was deserved, given her use of a private server for e-mail while secretary of state. In the face of a scathing report from the State Department’s inspector general, she would only acknowledge that using a private server was “a mistake”. She had refused to hand in that server, holding back 32,000 e-mails she decided were “personal”. She had said she would cooperate fully with the investigation, but she and several of her top aides refused to be interviewed by the IG. One e-mail in the 30,000 that were turned in to investigators said she rejected an aide’s suggestion to switch to an official e-mail address because, “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible”. Exposing government business to cyber hacking was a lesser concern, evidently.

Of a different sort was the relentless crusade by those on the right to make her responsible for the inadequate security that led to the loss of life in the attack in Benghazi in September 2012 and for then, fearing consequences in the presidential election two months away, calling the attack a response to an anti-Islam video rather than admitting it was by a terrorist group. Shock at the culpability and incompetence of Clinton was daily fare — and still is, today as this is written — in Fox News’ propaganda campaign to block Ms Clinton from ever becoming president.

again until we get it right

That yet another House committee was set up in May 2014, after investigations by the State Department itself and by seven congressional committees that had issued nine reports, speaks loudly that is was for the political purpose of keeping those accusations alive. California Republican representative Kevin McCarthy said as much when he let slip, “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee…”, illustrating Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe as when a politician tells the truth.

The Republican-controlled committee moved at the pace of garden slug and only just now released its report two years and $7 million later. It faults the defense and intelligence arms of the Obama administration for leaving our outpost so exposed, but, other than its tangential discovery that Ms Clinton used a private e-mail server, comes up with nothing that finds her directly culpable of the Benghazi debacle. Committee chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) emphasized that the inquiry was not about one person, it was about four people (i.e, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others) and was left with the rather pointless criticism that, “Nothing could have reached Benghazi because nothing was ever headed to Benghazi”, long after it had been determined that no military asset was deployed because nothing could have reached Benghazi in time.

looking in the wrong places

Which brings us to the question of how these two investigations have won almost all the attention of the media, displacing what this page contends should have drawn the more intense scrutiny — the record of Bill Clinton gathering up vast sums of money from parties whose business came before Hillary Clinton’s State Department from 2009 to 2013 when she was its secretary and could arise during her possible presidency.

Start with this episode: The United Arab Emirates wanted a facility at their Abu Dhabi airport where their privileged could have their visas pre-cleared before boarding flights to the U.S. so they wouldn’t have to wait in line on arrival in this country. Only five others have been extended this convenience: Canada, Ireland and three Caribbean countries.

American and other airlines were dead against, as it would give the U.A.E. airline, Etihad Airways, an unfair advantage. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, unions for pilots and flight attendants and
EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
more than 150 lawmakers from both parties ultimately opposed it,
reported the The Wall Street Journal. Hillary Clinton’s State Department and Homeland Security nevertheless issued a “letter of intent”, whereupon Bill Clinton was invited to Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E.’s capital city, to give a speech, actually the first of two.

The invitation for the first talk in December 2011 was from an environmental group. He would speak for 20 minutes on climate change, for which he was paid $500,000. Despite the subject, the Etihad airline proved to be one of the sponsors. The second speech a year later was on the value of tourism for another $500,000. A week later, the U.S. and the U.A.E. signed the agreement authorizing the pre-clearance facility.

It was “farcical” to suggest any connection between Bill Clinton’s talks and the approval, said a State Department spokesman. So we are asked to believe that what Bill had to say about climate and tourism were of such high import and edification that Abu Dhabi groups gladly paid $1 million for the privilege of hearing him and for no other consideration.

money for nothing?

By agreement with the Obama administration in 2009, the Clinton Foundation ceased accepting contributions from foreign governments as a condition for her appointment as secretary of state. Once she left that office in 2013, the practice resumed, regardless of her obvious intention of running for president. The Wall Street Journal reported that by 2014 Clinton was getting contributions for his fund at an accelerating rate — more than $1 million from the U.A.E., millions from Saudi Arabia and Oman, hundreds of thousands from Qatar, Germany, Australia and a Canadian agency that was promoting the Keystone XL pipeline. The newspaper tallied that in all Bill and Hillary raised from $2 billion to $3 billion during the last two decades. In the 2001 to 2015 window after his presidency, The Washington Post tallied that Bill and Hillary had collected $158.3 million for speeches alone.

Was this just feel good money? Individuals, corporations and foreign governments contributing to worthy causes? Or did they expect something more? The pair insist there is never any connection between Bill’s foundations and Hillary’s political world.

nary was heard a discouraging word

Wall Street has always been among their largest sources of money from Bill Clinton’s run for the presidency in 1992 to Hillary’s build up to her presidential run, as Bernie Sanders constantly hammered home. In another report, the Journal dug into the pilgrimages to the Street and found that Hillary had been paid $4.1 million for “closed-door talks” between her job at State and her declaring her candidacy. Those attending say the talks were “friendly and light” and avoided anything controversial such as Wall Street’s role in the 2008 crash. To the contrary, she sometimes thanked the bankers for what they had done for the country.

So again we are left to ponder why major Wall Street firms — Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and UBS are listed — paid $225,000 a speech to listen to little more than pleasantries — unless they thought there would be something, someday, to show for it.

sanctions lifted

Peter Schweizer heads the Government Accountability Institute and was formerly with the right-leaning Hoover Institution. We’ve previously reported on his investigative work that revealed members of Congress trading on inside information . He also wrote, “Clinton Cash”, another source for today’s topic. He cites the Swedish telecom company Ericsson, which had in 2011 been called out in a State Department report for selling equipment to oppressive regimes. The Obama administration was working up new sanctions that would enjoin companies from doing business with Iran. A week before the sanctions were announced, Bill Clinton gave a speech at Ericsson. He was paid $750,000. Ericsson mysteriously disappeared from the list. The Clintons would say that there is no connection for that softened stance.

minecraft

Another, with serious ramifications: In 2005, Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra flew to Kazakhstan to meet with its authoritarian leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan who needed heft, so be brought along Bill Clinton on his private plane. An exhaustively researched New York Times story reported that within days, Giustra had cut a deal that won him stakes in three highly lucrative state-run uranium mines for his company, UrAsia Energy Ltd.

In 2007, UrAsia merged with South Africa’s Uranium One, keeping that company’s name. Straightaway, Uranium One began buying companies in the U.S. that held uranium assets across the western states. The company intended to become “a powerhouse” in uranium “with the potential to become the domestic supplier of choice for U.S. utilities”.

A year later, as Hillary Clinton ran for president against Barack Obama, the Times discovered that Giustra had contributed an undisclosed $31.3 million to Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation. Shortly thereafter, at a gala with Hollywood stars in attendance and performances by stars-for-hire Elton John and Chakira, Giustra would pledge another $100 million, this to the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, which planned to promote ethical labor and environmental practices in natural resources industries.

A year later in 2009, a subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, looking for uranium sources to bolster its insufficient reserves, stepped in to buy 17% of Uranium One, now based in Vancouver, and within a year proposed to buy a controlling 51% interest.

But Uranium One’s assets in the the American West required U.S. government approval by the inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment on which sit the attorney general, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, Energy, and the State Department. Remembering that it was up to the State Department to decide on whether the Keystone XL pipeline could cross our border, its reasonable to conclude that the secretary of state must have a significant voice on that committee. And by then that was Hillary Clinton, serving in the Obama administration at the same time her husband’s foundation was collecting millions from Uranium One.

The Times also found that the CEO who took over the company when Giustra resigned had contributed millions more to the Clinton Foundation while the company’s application was before the committee, funds that Uranium One had never reported. At the same time, Bill Clinton was invited to Moscow to give a speech for which he was paid $500,000. The sponsor was a Russian investment bank with ties to Giustra.

When a Chinese company sought a 51% stake in a Nevada gold mining company on land that might hold uranium, the foreign investment committee had scotched the deal, but the same concern was not applied to Uranium One. The Rosatom subsidiary was given the green light to buy control of Uranium One. It had pledged not to own more than the 51%, but the company was subsequently taken private and is now 100% owned by the Russian company, a major coup in Vladimir Putin’s quest to control much of the world’s uranium stocks.

Where does that leave the U.S.? The sale gave the Russians control of 20% of all uranium production capacity in the United States, a capacity that provides only 20% of the uranium needed by the nation’s nuclear plants that provide 20% of the nation’s electrical power.

out of sight

We complained at the outset that the media has neglected the blatant connections between lavish payments and the favorable policy shifts that followed. But aren’t we citing several newspaper investigative reports as our source? The problem is that they’ve receded into the background — the Rosatom exposé is from April of last year, for example — and are missing now that the election approaches.

With his hour-and-fifteen minute acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, Donald Trump’s promises to fix everything that is wrong in the country — and fast — say that he’s in the race to the end. But just so we can say we were aware of the possibility should it happen, we’ll take a last look at a frequent conjecture that Trump was — at first, anyway — just in the running for the money and, whether before or after the election, he might just take the money and run.

The questions of serious commitment burbled to the surface whenever he insulted yet another voting bloc with an ethnic slur or angered conservatives with his occasional leftward blasphemies. His string of unforced errors bring to mind “The Producers”, the comedy in which Zero Mostel deliberately fails so as to pocket the money.

Just a month ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban suggested Trump would quit if offered $5 billion. “I guess we’d have to think about it”, Trump quipped(?).

Or might a psychiatrist adduce that a deeper part of him is doing its utmost to see that he self-destructs. So very ill-prepared is he to handle the difficulties and complexities of the Oval Office, that even braggadocian Trump must have secret fears of what lies ahead should he win.

But what if Trump, who entered the race as a complete outsider who knows so little about national affairs or international matters (“Belgium is a beautiful city”, he said; he drew a blank when asked about Brexit), believed he wouldn’t go far but would profit by trumpeting the Trump brand and propping up his income, which has taken some hits with “Celebrity Apprentice” no longer on the air ($15 million a year, he claims) and NBC axing Trump’s partly owned Miss Universe Pageant for his slander of Mexicans, causing an audience plunge from 5.6 million to 1.2 million.

Tony Schwartz, picked by Trump to write a biography that instead became “Art of the Deal” (which Trump now thinks he wrote), spent 18 months tagging along after Donald doing the research and comments in this current New Yorker magazine piece on the candidate’s “absolute lack of interest in anything beyond power and money.”

His successes have drawn him ever deeper in the race, but last fall he more than once said that if he began to drop in the polls, which he constantly touted, he might well drop out.

To draw attention to the brand, Trump has staged several campaign events at Mar-a-Lago, his lavish Palm Beach club. At a press conference in March, a stack of Trump products was on display —
Trump press conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club
Trump steaks, Trump wine, Trump water, etc. — products which he doesn’t produce but to which he lends his name for a presumed royalty. Heading into the summer and the general election campaign, off he went to Scotland to promote his new golf course and celebrate Brexit; the drop in the pound’s value would make it more economical for Americans to make a golfing excursion. “When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry”, he said.

But the “marketing genius”, as he is often called, has wound up with the wrong demographic. His largely working class supporters can’t afford his luxury class offerings, such as dripping-in-gold and chandeliers Mar-a-Lago. Who is he talking to when he promotes “signature wine” and said, “If you want to take one, we’ll charge you about $50 a steak”.

Asked whether, once he proves he can beat Hillary Clinton, he might just take a walk? He “flashed a mischievous smile”, said The New York Times and said “I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens”.

All candidates have their online “stores”, selling T-shirts and tchotchkes to make money for their campaigns. Here’s Hillary’s for example. But Trump’s is of a different order. At shop.donaldjtrump.com, there are 18 variants of T and other shirts running to $55 (Can’t decide? Just sort by price or popularity). To go with them, 18 different hats reading “Trump” and “Make America Great Again” for up to $30.

He charges even for bumper stickers and buttons; signs for your lawn (set of two for $20); signs, megaphones and banners to be brought to rallies. You can buy a “Team Trump Rally Pack” with a selection of cheerleading gear, even pom-poms, for a mere $335 — enough for a group of six.

Just savvy marketing to defray campaign costs? Maybe, but if you are wondering whether he is in it to win, CNN’s Money section took note that Trump spent $208,000 on hats, $5,000 on signs and $694,000 on T-shirts, mugs and stickers in June as reported to the Federal Election Commission, but only $120,000 on ads. Trump probably reckons that those hats will be atop heads for a long time to come, even if he loses — walking advertising worn as a badge by the disgruntled.

CNN said that the Clinton campaign has budgeted $117 million in television advertising prior to Election Day, whereas Trump and supporters have committed to only $700,000.

“I need support from the Republicans”, said Trump on “Fox and Friends”. “It would be nice to have full support from people that are in office, full verbal support,” Trump said. “With all of that being said, I may go a different route if things don’t happen.”

Trump has made much of his boast that he is financing his campaign from his own wallet and that he is therefore beholden to no special interest groups. It is interesting to note, though, that he has used his own companies to perform campaign services.

Back in March the Daily Beast combed through disclosures to the Federal Election Committee and
tallied $2 million that the Trump campaign paid to Trump owned businesses during 2015, most to Tag Air Inc., where he is CEO and which owns the fleet of aircraft that ferries him about the country for campaign appearances. In June he paid more than $1 million to his businesses. In May the campaign paid $432,372 to his Mar-a-Lago Club for rent and catering.

There’s nothing illegal about that, but as money comes in across the summer to defeat Hillary, watch for whether Trump quietly bills the Republican Party for all his outlays to date. And that imaginative form of double-dipping, would include reimbursement for all he had paid to companies he owns.

Trump fans wanted a businessman and that may be what they get.

By guest columnist Al Rodbell

Trump’s recent meeting with hundreds of leaders of the Christian Right was closed to outsiders, but somehow much leaked out, including this covert video that begins with words to the effect of…

“There’s nothing out there about Hillary’s religion, nothing. I think it will be an extension of Obama. At least with him we know what we were starting with and could be alert”.

Interpretation in plain English: “There is no evidence that Hillary is a Christian, and could well be a Muslim, like we know Obama is. But at least we were on the lookout for him, while Hillary is “passing” as Christian. So she could be anti-Christian like that other deceiver.

Evangelists relate to this and know that the Devil is also known as the great deceiver. They know this passage:

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
2 Corinthians 11:3

The crowd knew well of Donald Trump’s life, his repeated adulteries, which, far from asking for forgiveness, he boasted about on the air. They also knew that for most of his life he had been in favor of abortions, or in their perspective, allowing the murder of unborn babies. But none of this mattered at all.

Trump has done what could not have been done by any atheist, humanist or progressive. He has ripped off the facade of the Christian Right having anything to do with the teaching of Jesus Christ. What it has evolved to in this country is a special interest group, that along with all organizations that say the magic words, “I am a Religion”, are given tax subsidies. And if it’s the Religion of the Majority, the right to allow prayers in government legislatures.

What they have not been allowed to do in order to retain these benefits is to be overtly political, to endorse a given party or candidate. This is basic to the rationale of government subsidizing and supporting religion, in that it transcends these secular mundane battles to look to the higher principle of unification, of loving one’s neighbor and of being responsible to a higher moral authority.

Donald Trump, being what he is, is oblivious to his principle, and so as a special bonus for the Christian Right’s ignoring that his life is the antithesis of Christianity, he promised them he will as president allow churches to become overtly and blatantly promoters of a chosen political movement. Under a Trump presidency, the organized Dog Whistle No More: July 21: There it was in his acceptance speech: “I would like to thank the evangelical community who have been so good to me and so supportive. You have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits.”
    

Christian religion in America will be part of the the Trumpian regime, with the legal right to preach the message that Christianity is engaged in a war, not with the Devil, but with that other deceiver, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

I realize that it’s difficult for readers here to handle more condemnations of Trump destroying the core values of this country, but this should be a meaningful landmark in his quest to change the essence of this country. His clarion warning against outsiders, Muslims, Mexicans, Blacks and Asians; his opposition to the movement to replace the wars of the previous two centuries with a developing openness to free trade in commerce and ideas, have now been extended. This meeting, this secret meeting, was his message to Christians that even though he isn’t a very good one, he wants them in his coalition.

Mike Huckabee was the M.C of this event, and said words to the effect, “We certainly would not be considering you to be a pastor at one of our churches”. This was acknowledged with laughter from the crowd meaning that we know you are no model of Christianity and maybe not even “born again.” But, so what. They did not want that from Donald Trump. The deal was, we will support you if you give us even more power. We, with the help of your Supreme Court, will be allowed to infiltrate public schools and local city councils and plant the symbols of Christianity, which means America will subtly become what our church is.

We will be closer to the religio-facism of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, if the current neo-Islamist president succeeds in this country, was the meaning of the secret meeting; whereas if Trump becomes president, he will go down in history as one of the markers in the path of transforming this ostensibly secular democracy into something very different.

                       Al’s other essays can be found at AlRodbell.com.