Peter Schweizer:
Serious Investigation of Clinton Foundation and Email Server Is Long Overdue
by John Hayward 5 Jan 2018
Breitbart News
Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer talked to Breitbart News Daily on
Friday about the renewed investigations into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified
documents and pay-for-play corruption allegations
against the Clinton Foundation.
Schweizer said it is important to investigate these
allegations thoroughly to uphold the rule of law.
“The entire issue of investigating the Clintons has been
politicized by the Clintons,” he said. “Their defense has been, ‘Look at who we
are, rather than what we have done. Look at the fact that I’m a Democrat, and
people have been targeting me for years, and this has been part of a political
campaign.’”
“I think what everybody wants, as it relates to the
Clintons or anybody else, is just let’s simply look at what a person did, and
look at the circumstances, and determine whether it violated the law,” he said.
“The politicized nature of this is a result of the Clinton campaign and the
Clinton team to sort of muddy the waters. They’ve made it political. I think
that’s what people are most frustrated about.”
Schweizer said the Clinton Foundation case raises
questions about “whether they complied with certain rules and requirements,”
but the key issue is whether there was a “pay-to-play” operation in effect at
the State Department under Hillary Clinton.
“In other words, did people make large campaign – or, in
this case, foundation – contributions to the Clintons, and did they get
favorable treatment in return?” he told SiriusXM host Steve Bannon. “The fact
of the matter is, Steve, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence, and there’s
also now internal documents that speak exactly to that.”
“One of the things that they don’t want to talk about is
that they did an internal review,
the Clinton Foundation did, back in 2011,” he recalled. “It was actually
ordered by Chelsea
Clinton. It was done by Simpson Thatcher, which is a very prominent
New York law firm, very heavy hitters; they understand the law. What they found
in the review is shocking. They said in their own internal review that there
was a culture of pay-to-play at the Clinton Foundation, that major donors had
expectations that they were going to get favors in return.”
“Look at some of the reporting that came out as related
to Haiti,” he suggested. “ABC News and
other outlets have done a lot of reporting on this. You had emails that came
out which showed that people who were FOB – Friends of Bill – were put at the
head of the line to get contracts for the reconstruction of Haiti.”
“These are not theories. These are not speculations.
These are actual facts, and this goes the heart – the basic heart – of American
political decision-making. We’ve seen in our history that people from all walks
of life, in terms of their political careers, have engaged in this. In the case
of the Clintons, it’s the size and the scope of the contributions that are so
unique. The amounts of money dwarf anything that we’ve seen historically,” he
said.
Schweizer said the case has never been thoroughly
investigated and maintained Hillary Clinton was not properly vetted by the
Obama administration before becoming secretary of state.
“When she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she had
hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the chairman at
that time was John Kerry, who would later succeed her as secretary of state,”
Schweizer noted. “One of the things that he insisted on, and also President
Obama insisted on, to his credit, was that they had to put in a series of
structural reforms, or they were structural requirements really, in order for
her to become secretary of state.”
“One of the main ones was, ‘You simply have to disclose
all the donations that you take.’”
“What you’ll find now is the Clintons tout the fact that,
‘Oh, yeah, we’ve put all the donations out there.’ Well, they were forced to do
so. They didn’t want to do so. It was a condition for her to get the job,” he
recalled.
“The problem is that even that basic requirement of
disclosure – a signed agreement with the President of the United States, Barack Obama – they violated! We know that, for example, the
chairman of Uranium
One, this Russian uranium company, the chairman donated $2.35
million to the Clinton Foundation as that deal was being approved, and it was
never disclosed. That’s been confirmed by multiple news outlets. We broke it in
Clinton
Cash. We found out about that contribution by going
through Canadian
tax records.”
“At its very basic level, there were concerns early on by
people like John
Kerry and by Barack Obama and even basic requirements like
disclosure they just simply ignored. I think that’s part of the problem that
even a lot of Clinton supporters have had: sort of a cavalier attitude in which
they have dismissed any sense of accountability,” he said.
Schweizer also stressed the importance of recovering and
examining the more than 33,000 emails Hillary Clinton did
not surrender to the State Department from her private server.
“The Clinton defense is, ‘Well, you know, there are other
people that had private email accounts.’ The key difference is the Clintons not
only had private email accounts; they had a private server. What makes that
different? Well, you had Colin Powell, one of her predecessors, use an AOL account
occasionally for business purposes. The difference is that if Colin Powell decided he wanted to delete his emails, he could
delete them off of his laptop, but they were still available on a server that
AOL controlled,” Schweizer explained.
“What the Clintons wanted was a private server with
complete control and the ability to delete completely the communications she
had while she was secretary of state,” he said.
“The process is pretty galling. First of all, they
deleted more emails than they actually turned over to the State Department.
They deleted 33,000. They turned 30,000 over to the State Department. Their
argument was these were all personal in nature. So they’re basically arguing
that she sent far more private, personal emails while she was America’s chief
diplomat than she did professional ones,” he noted.
“The FBI looked at this and found that, no, there were
lots of professional emails that she deleted because they found emails that
were of a professional nature in other people’s email accounts. They wanted to
erase the ability that we had to see what she was communicating about. I have
believed from the beginning that the emails that were deleted are related
precisely to these pay-to-play issues,” he said.
“Based on the emails that were released, the some 30,000,
we plotted the dates on which those emails appeared,” Schweizer revealed. “What
you find is that there are days, sometimes, when she is overseas in Asia,
for example, or Africa, where a lot of these deals were going down, where,
based on the emails that they turned over, they’re claiming that she didn’t
send a single email – over, in some cases, a 72-hour period, which is absurd to
believe that America’s chief diplomat traveling overseas did not send or
receive any emails over a three-day period.”
“So the timing doesn’t work, and then when you look at
certain critical moments – for example, when you talk about this visit she had
in Colombia where
she showed up as secretary of state in Bogota, Colombia, the same day as her
husband, the same day as Frank Giustra, by far the biggest contributor
to the Clinton Foundation – and there’s no emails whatsoever concerning
meetings that we know took place between her, Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra,
and the president of Colombia. It’s gaps like that that clearly indicate they
were covering their trails,” he charged.
Schweizer said such clandestine arrangements are contrary
to the Freedom of Information Act, which was intended to allow “citizens and
journalists to chart official communications.”
“This is a law with real teeth,” he observed. “The
problem is that if you have this kind of ability of politicians to erase
servers, to hide tens of thousands of emails, that law is meaningless. This was
a clear attempt and desire to avoid that law and any scrutiny that it brings.”
Schweizer pointed out that some of the actions involved
in the Uranium One case may have exceeded the statute of limitations, but
others could be covered by laws with much longer statutory authority, such as
the RICO anti-racketeering act.
“A lot of the strategy on these issues for the Clintons
has been to just buy time because of these issues of statute of limitations,
arguing that this is sort of ‘old news,’” he said.
He also felt that thoroughly investigating the Clinton
scandals could provide guidelines for cleaner government in the future,
especially when considering opaque agencies like CFIUS, the Committee on
Foreign Investment in the United States.
“There are decisions being made by CFIUS yearly that have
fundamental importance. It is one of the most complex, mysterious, and
lucrative processes that needs to be opened up. This is a great way to do it,”
he suggested.
Schweizer said the FBI’s reopening the Clinton Foundation
investigation in Little Rock, Arkansas, is important because “one of the
problems that has dogged the email investigation and others is, so much of that
was steered from the headquarters of the FBI, and like any other government
institution, when it’s located in Washington, DC, it becomes much more
politicized.”
“This is a fascinating and, I think, important
development. The field officers of the FBI are second to none. They are, by my
experience, not politicized. We’re going to have an opportunity to really see
what the FBI
can find, especially if they’re given the sort of subpoena powers
that they were denied in the past by the Obama Department of Justice,” he said.
“It’s a little bit like the American military,” he
elaborated. “If you are a general officer in the U.S. military, and you get
assigned in Washington, DC, the running joke is that you kind of go native,
that you start to reflect less the values of the branch of the military you’re
in – the Army, Navy, Air Force, whatever – and you start to go native. When
they’re in Washington, they’re socializing with political figures. They’re very
aware of budgets. They have institutional responsibilities.”
“I think having field offices lead these investigations
is far better. These are driven, dedicated, ambitious FBI agents who are
looking to get to the bottom of these stories. They don’t have the same kind of
political motivations that people at headquarters do,” he said.
“I think, by the way, if the Clinton email investigation
had been done much more by, say, the New York branch or other entities, as
opposed to the headquarters, I think it’s very possible that that investigation
would have been a lot more hard-hitting than it ended up being,” Schweizer
added.
Peter Schweizer is the head of the Government Accountability Institute and author
of the best-selling book Clinton
Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped
to Make Bill and Hillary Clinton Rich.
Let’s connect the dots:
Clinton Foundation
Arkansas
state government was a funder for the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Note: Paul D. Reynolds
was a funder for the Bill, Hillary &
Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and an adviser on UrAsia-Uranium One merger at Uranium One.
Ian W. Telfer was
the chairman for Uranium One, a
funder for the Bill, Hillary &
Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and a friend of Frank Giustra.
William J. Clinton
is the founder of the Bill, Hillary
& Chelsea Clinton Foundation, Chelsea
V. Clinton’s father, married to Hillary
Rodham Clinton, Frank Giustra’s
friend, was an adviser for the 2016
Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and a Arkansas state government governor.
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, a co-chair, national finance council for
the Ready PAC (Ready For Hillary), a
board member for the International
Crisis Group, and was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open
Society.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Urban Institute (think tank), the International Rescue Committee, the Climate Reality Project, and the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Chelsea V. Clinton
is William J. Clinton & Hillary Rodham Clinton’s daughter, the vice
chair for the Bill, Hillary &
Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and Vernon
E. Jordan Jr. was a guest at her 2010 wedding.
Hillary Rodham
Clinton is married to William J.
Clinton, Chelsea V. Clinton’s mother,
was the candidate for the 2016 Hillary
Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and a director at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation.
Frank Giustra is a
friend of William J. Clinton & Ian W. Telfer, a director & funder
for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea
Clinton Foundation, and a board member for the International Crisis Group.
Kim Campbell was a
board member for the International
Crisis Group, and a prime minister for Canada.
Vernon E. Jordan
Jr. was a guest at Chelsea
V. Clinton’s 2010 wedding, a trustee at Howard University, is a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), a senior counsel for Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, the Urban Institute (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference
participant (think tank).
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP was the lobby firm for Colombia.
Colombia
is a Burson-Marsteller client.
Donald A. Baer is
a global CEO for Burson-Marsteller,
and a trustee at the Urban Institute
(think tank).
Colin L. Powell
was a trustee at Howard University, is
an adviser at Kleiner Perkins Caufield
& Byers, an overseer at the International
Rescue Committee, and Michael K.
Powell’s father.
Kati
Marton is an overseer at the International
Rescue Committee, and was the Bonn bureau chief for the ABC News.
ONE Campaign is
a partner with the International Rescue
Committee.
Michelle Obama
was an advocate for the ONE Campaign,
and is married to Barack Obama.
Albert A. Gore Jr.
is an adviser for Kleiner Perkins Caufield
& Byers, the chairman for the Climate
Reality Project, and was a St.
Albans School (Washington) graduate.
This ‘Bitter Cold’ Is What Global Warming Looks Like,
Explains Al Gore
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Frank J. Caufield
is a co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield
& Byers, and was a director at AOL
Inc.
Michael K. Powell
was a director at AOL Inc., a trustee
at the Aspen Institute (think tank),
and is Colin L. Powell’s son.
John
F. Kerry was a St. Albans School
(Washington) student, and is Cameron
F. Kerry’s brother.
Cameron F. Kerry
is John F. Kerry’s brother, a senior
counsel at Sidley Austin LLP, and
was an associate at Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr.
Sidley Austin
LLP was a consulting firm for Canada.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Colin L. Powell is
an overseer at the International Rescue
Committee, an adviser at Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers, Michael
K. Powell’s father, and was a trustee at Howard University.
Kati
Marton is an overseer at the International
Rescue Committee, and was the Bonn bureau chief for the ABC News.
Aaron Zebley was
a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering
Hale and Dorr, a chief of staff to the director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
and is assisting in Russia probe
with Robert S. Mueller III.
Robert S.
Mueller III is assisting
in Russia probe with Aaron Zebley, a
director with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), is a special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice, a special counsel investigating Russian ties in the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign,
and investigating the interference in 2016 U.S. election with Russia.
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