FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers Friday the bureau is reviewing new information related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a political bombshell that comes 11 days ahead of the election.
After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
In an apparently paywalled story, the New York Times is claiming that the new emails came not from the zillions of WikiLeaks emails, but from Anthony Weiner’s personal electronic devices.
We have written frequently in recent weeks about a feud that erupted between Chelsea Clinton and Doug Band back in 2011 after Chelsea raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest between Band’s firm, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department (see here, here, here and here). The feud ultimately resulted in Band being forced to draft a memo spelling out, in vivid detail, the many entangled relationships between himself, Teneo, the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Fortunately, today’s Wikileaks dump included that memo which reveals, for the first time, the precise financial flows between the Clinton Foundation, Band’s firm Teneo Consulting, and the Clinton family’s private business endeavors.
The memo starts with a brief background on Teneo, which was created in June 2011, shortly after Declan Kelly resigned from his position as “United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland,” a position to which he was appointed by Secretary Clinton.
In June 2009, DK Consulting was founded by Declan Kelley. Mr. Kelly served as COO of FTI Consulting until June 2009, when he stepped down and established DK Consulting. At that time, he also became the United States Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland. Pursuant to the terms of his exit agreement with FTI and consistent with the ethics agreement of his uncompensated special government employee appointment at the State Department, Mr. Kelly retained and continued to provide services to three paying clients (Coke, Dow, and UBS) and one pro bono client (Allstate). In late 2009, Declan retained me as a consultant to DK Consulting to help support the needs of these clients.
Stop right there. Who takes Allstate, a Fortune 100 company, as a pro bono client?
Here’s a copy of the document Zero Hedge is relying on (though alas, whoever put that up through some encoding bullshit to keep you from copying from it). Band goes into detail about just how much scratch is involved in scratching the Clintons’ backs:
“Cognizant of the Foundation’s significant fundraising needs as well as my role as the primary fundraiser for the Foundation for the past 11 years, as a partner in Teneo, Mr. Kelley [sic] and I have asked and encouraged our clients to contribute to the Foundation,” Band wrote. “Through our efforts, we have brought new donors to the Foundation and garnered increased giving from existing donors.”
And let’s look at the donors (all amounts for the period 2004-2011 except where noted):
The Coca-Cola Company: Total giving: $4,330,000
The Dow Chemical Company: Total giving: $780,000
UBS: Total giving: $540,000
The American Ireland Fund: Total giving: $350,000 (all 2010-2011)
The All-State [sic] Corporation: Total giving: $265,000 (with an additional $500,000 pledge)
Barclays Capital: Total giving: $1,100,000 (2008-2011)
Indo Gold: Total giving: $100,000
BHP Billiton Limited: Total giving: $20,000
Teneo: Total giving: $100,000
There’s a further list of Teneo clients (GEMS Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Laureate International Universities) who were already donating to the Clinton Foundation.
The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”
That’s called “quid pro quo.” Also this: “Emails show that Cheryl Mills, who at the time was serving as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, was deeply involved in the foundation’s proceedings.” Yeah, I think that’s been pretty well established at this point. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
More Clinton pay to play: “The head of a for-profit university that donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation was rewarded with an invite to a high-profile State Department dinner at the request of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The five most disturbing donations to the Clinton Foundation. Including the Saudis, the Russian uranium deal money, and Indonesian tobacco magnate Putera Sampoerna who “donated and worked with the foundation before he got the U.S. government to underwrite millions in loans offered by the foundation and secured high-profile support for its activities from Sec. Clinton and other senior federal officials.”
“Five mega-donors and their wives are responsible for one in every $17 dollars that have been spent on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
The political backers of a longtime Clinton crony and fixer, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, made $675,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to the election campaign of the wife of the FBI official who later ran the investigation of Mrs. Clinton.”
As the Wall Street Journal reports, the contributions went to the 2015 Virginia state senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of then-associate-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. McAuliffe had recruited Dr. McCabe to run. After her campaign ended unsuccessfully (Dr. McCabe lost to incumbent Republican Dick Black), Andrew McCabe was promoted to deputy director, a role in which he assumed oversight of the Clinton e-mail investigation.
“The fact that Hillary Clinton’s inner circle was raising substantial funds for Gov. McAuliffe’s PAC and this same PAC gave close to a half-million dollars to the campaign of the wife of the senior FBI official involved in the Clinton investigation sure looks like a payoff – a major payoff.”
It’s not just the FBI. Department of Justice employees as a whole are hevaily backing Clinton:
Employees of the Department of Justice, which investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, gave Clinton 97 percent of their donations. Trump received $8,756 from DOJ employees compared with $286,797 for Clinton. From IRS employees, Clinton received 94 percent of donations.
Which brings up the question: Why are federal government employees even allowed to make campaign donations?
Scott Adams endorses Trump for all the bullying Democrats carried out against him and other Americans:
I’ve been trying to figure out what common trait binds Clinton supporters together. As far as I can tell, the most unifying characteristic is a willingness to bully in all its forms.
If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.
If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.
if you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.
On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.
We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.
We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that.
Yesterday, by no coincidence, Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos all published similar-sounding hit pieces on me, presumably to lower my influence. (That reason, plus jealousy, are the only reasons writers write about other writers.)
Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
Erica Garner rips Hillary for trying to make political hay out of her father’s death.
“Hillary Clinton campaign aides had a frantic email exchange in August 2015 over who should call the candidate to ‘sober her up some’ at around 4:30 in the afternoon.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Sources close to Hillary tell me that her doctors have discovered she suffers from arrhythmia (an abnormal heart beat) and a leaking heart valve. They have recommended that she consider having valve replacement surgery, but Hillary has refused because she does not want to risk the negative political fallout from stories about such a serious operation.
In addition to the arrhythmia and leaking heart valve, Hillary suffers from chronic low blood pressure, insufficient blood flow, a tendency to form life-threatening blood clots, and troubling side effects from her medications.
It’s getting to the point that not only can I not keep up with the torrent of email leaks documenting Hillary Clinton corruption, I can’t even keep with the people keeping up with the leaks!
A top State Department official offered a “quid pro quo” to an FBI investigator to declassify an e-mail from Hillary Clinton’s private server in exchange for allowing the bureau to operate in countries where it was banned, stunning new documents revealed Monday.
The FBI documents show that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy pitched the deal to the unnamed agent, allegedly as part of an effort to back up Clinton’s claim that she did not send or receive classified documents on the server in her Westchester home.
“[Redacted] indicated he had been contacted by [Kennedy], Undersecretary of State, who had asked his assistance in altering the e-mail’s classification in exchange for a ‘quid pro quo,’ ” according to the documents, which summarized interviews the feds conducted in the summer of 2015 while investigating Clinton’s e-mail practices.
“[Redacted] advised that in exchange for marking the e-mail unclassified, STATE would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more Agents in countries where they are presently forbidden,” the document added.
One State Department staffer described feeling “immense pressure” to complete the review quickly and to not label anything as classified.
“This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling,” an FBI special agent who has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. “We talk about it in the office and don’t know how Comey can keep going.”
The agent was also surprised that the bureau did not bother to search Clinton’s house during the investigation.
“We didn’t search their house. We always search the house. The search should not just have been for private electronics, which contained classified material, but even for printouts of such material,” he said.
“There should have been a complete search of their residence,” the agent pointed out. “That the FBI did not seize devices is unbelievable. The FBI even seizes devices that have been set on fire.”
But most serious disclosure in the review was that donors expected a “quid pro quo” in return for their contributions. “Some interviewees reported conflicts of those raising funds or donors, some of whom may have an expectation of quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts.”
“This was bright line illegal,” Wall Street analyst and philanthropy expert Charles Ortel told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is a rogue charity that was out of control for years. And the trustees elected to not correct them. We’re not talking about people with no knowledge of the laws. These are people who can’t claim ignorance.”
The email from Huma Abedin, Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department, was addressed to Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook. Hillary Clinton was a director of the foundation at the time.
Singapore and Hong Kong officials reportedly were also vying to convene the CGI meeting in their countries, but the North African nation ultimately hosted it in a five-star hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2015. Abedin told Podesta and Mook that Morocco was not CGI’s “first choice.”
The actual meeting was paid for by OCP, the Moroccan-government-owned mining company that has been accused of serious human rights violations. Clinton vigorously supported the Moroccan King when she was Secretary of State and the U.S.-financed Export-Import Bank gave OCP a $92 million loan guarantee during her tenure as Secretary of State.
The mining company also contributed between $5 million to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the charity’s web site.
“Electing Hillary Clinton will be an endorsement of permanent political corruption and consent for the use of government as an instrument to extinguish dissent.”
Wikileaks also brought back to light a bit of information that was mostly swept under the rug at the time: Eric McFadden, Hillary’s 2008 Catholic community liaison, was arrested in 2009 for running an underage prostitution ring. Just another member of the Clinton Campaign Moral Freakshow…
The list of MSM reporters who take their marching orders from Hillary. On the list: ABC’s George Stephanopoulos (Duh) and Diane Sawyer, New York Times‘s Gail Collins, etc. The only surprise is no one from the Washington Post on that list. Maybe they just assumed they already had marching orders to support Hillary. (Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)
Most evident from their downloads is the unremitting, almost incestual, alliance between elites (read: Democratic Party leadership) and the press, those who are informing us of what we are supposed to think. The myriad emails between New York Times reporter and CNBC anchor John Harwood and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta would approach the risible were they not so disturbing by implication. Presidential debate moderator Harwood, putatively a journalist, actually acts as an advisor to Podesta in them, warning the campaign manager of the dangers of a potential Ben Carson candidacy and even bragging to him about having tripped up Donald Trump at a debate.
But the presidential debate moderator is far from alone in his fealty to the ways and means of the nomenklatura. The New York Times and the Boston Globe—the emails show, as if we hadn’t guessed already—colluded with the Clinton campaign.
But the level of collusion goes much deeper than press and politicians. The Department of Justice itself—the emails also reveal—was in private communication with the Clinton people during the investigation of the Hillary Clinton homebrew server, warning her campaign in advance of a State Department release of emails. Everybody was colluding!
Excerpts from Hillary’s Goldman Sachs speech. In which Hillary declares she has nothing in common with those peons in the middle class, admits that jihadists are coming over among Syrian refugees, and proclaims her love of open borders.
More on the subject: “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” Sounds like the EU written large.
Hard to believe it’s been a mere five days since Trump held a press conference with women Bill Clinton sexually assaulted. So much news has come down the pike since…
The long list of women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Eileen Wellstone, Carolyn Moffet, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Becky Brown, Helen Dowdy, Cristy Zercher… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Scott Adams: “If the new battleground is spousal fidelity, you have to like Trump’s chances.”
New Trump ad hits Hillary on Pay-to-Play corruption:
Nigel Farage on Brexit and Trump: “I believe we are witnessing a popular uprising against failed politics on a global scale. People want to vote for candidates with personality, faults and all. It is the same in the UK, America and much of the rest of Europe. The little people have had enough. They want change.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
That NBC poll showing Hillary up 11 points is pure hogwash with biased samples from a company that’s on the Hillary campaign’s payroll. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
So much work to be done on big posts that it’s hard to do a small one today, so instead enjoy some selections from the #ClintonAFilm hashtag off Twitter instead:
Another week, another bumper crop of links on Clinton corruption:
That amazing thing about the Clinton web of corruption is that there are tentacles of the Clinton Foundation you’ve likely never even heard of, including the Clinton India Foundation:
Three months after leaving the White House in 2001, former President Bill Clinton arrived in India to cheering throngs to help those who had just lost a million homes in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that killed 20,000 and injured 166,000.
In classic Clinton style, he solemnly promised that his new nonprofit — called the American India Foundation (AIF) — would rebuild 100 villages. Rajat Gupta, his millionaire co-chairman, pledged $1 billion for the victims.
It never happened. Years later, AIF’s annual reports were reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation and show only seven villages were partially rebuilt by Clinton’s group, and a mere $2.7 million of $53 million raised over a decade went to the earthquake victims.
It gets worse:
The sheer number of AIF executives who ran afoul of the law is dramatic. Clinton’s handpicked AIF co-chairmen — Rajat Gupta, then head of McKinsey & Company and Victor Menezes, then Citibank chairman — were both convicted of insider trading. Gupta served 19 months in federal prison and Menezes was fined $2.7 million.
Gupta was close to the Clintons. He hired Chelsea Clinton right out of college for a six-figure salary to work at McKinsey and he donated between $10,000 to $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Raj Rajaratnam was perhaps the most notorious AIF trustee. He was convicted of 14 counts of security fraud in one of the largest and most spectacular Wall Street prosecutions in decades. He is currently serving serving a sentence of 11 years in prison. Gupta passed on insider tips to Rajaratnam.
Then there’s Vinod Gupta, an AIF director who the Securities and Exchange Commission helped remove as CEO of InfoUSA because he used company funds to support a lavish lifestyle. He was forced to resign and pay $9 million in restitution.
Vinod also bestowed large financial rewards to Clinton. He paid Bill $3.3 million and gave him 100,000 stock shares of his company without prior approval from the board of directors. Vinod allowed the Clinton family to use the company’s jet, also without board approval. The Clintons got $900,000 worth of air travel. And Vinod gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Vinod had spent a night in the White House Lincoln bedroom when the Clintons opened it up to donors.
Sant Singh Chatwal, another AIF trustee, pleaded guilty in 2014 to funneling more than $180,000 in illegal contributions to candidates for federal office, including Hillary. The Times of India reported the close relationship Chatwal had with the Clintons.
“Chatwal and his wife Daman were regular visitors to the White House during the Clinton presidency. A fortnight after the Clintons left for their new home in Chappaqua, New York, Sant Singh Chatwal and his elder son, Vikram, dropped in to meet them,” the newspaper wrote.
Naveen Jain, an AIF trustee, was accused of buying and selling stocks with insider knowledge as CEO of InfoSpace. He eventually paid $107 million in a civil suit over insider trading.
Ajay Shah, another trustee was forced to pay $14.8 million for contributing to the collapse of the Trust Bank of Kenya. He fled the country to avoid the Kenya High Court decree.
Sudesh K. Arora, president of Natel, entered the criminal plea for a major Department of Defense fraud investigation. He settled and his company paid a $1 million fine.
A new batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department offered fresh evidence Wednesday of the pains Clinton’s staff took to accommodate her husband’s paid speeches and her family’s foundation — just hours after Sen. Tim Kaine dismissed the possibility that the Clinton Foundation had wielded influence over his running mate.
Emails showed Clinton’s aides teamed up with the foundation to perform donor maintenance, craft messaging on key policies and put together guest lists for both diplomatic and philanthropic events. State Department staffers were often asked to advise Clinton’s husband on how to handle politically-fraught speaking engagements or foundation events, such as an effort to bring the new Libyan president to a Clinton Global Initiative meeting that was held less than two weeks after the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
The trove of roughly 200 pages of records made public Wednesday was just the latest and most convincing indication that, rather than operate as an independent organization, the Clinton Foundation leaned heavily on the State Department to expand its global reach.
But the four-star rating had hardly been announced before the Associated Press reported that Charity Navigator was a member of the CGI from 2012 to 2014. The CGI is one of the Clinton Foundation’s best-known programs, as it regularly convenes glittering gatherings of celebrities, government officials and philanthropic stars.
The $20,000 CGI membership fee was waived for Charity Navigator, which reported it as an in-kind contribution, according to the AP. The news organization said Charity Navigator chairman Michael Thatcher claimed his group joined CGI “to mingle with world leaders and promote its ratings.
Photograph evidence suggest that Hillary Clinton suffers from permanent double vision. On the bright side, that means she’s probably not a shape-shifting reptoid. Probably. (Hat tip: Dircetor Blue.)
Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday.
Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public — in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said.
The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee fired off a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking why the DOJ and FBI agreed to the restrictive terms, including that the FBI would destroy the laptops after finishing the search.
Has such an immunity deal ever been offered to a non-Clinton associate in the history of the Republic?
FBI immunity for Clinton aides that aren’t testifying against her, David Brock laundering money and taking a cut, Hillary’s mysterious ailment: Welcome to another week in Clinton Corruption!
40% of Hillary Clinton State Department board appointees were Clinton Foundation donors. What are the odds?
Clinton toady and Media Matters head David Brock is a one-man money laundering machine. He has 14 pro-Clinton groups, and every time he moves money between them, he rakes off a cut for himself. It’s like his own little mini-Clinton Foundation.
Liberals scream at Jimmy Fallon for acting like Jimmy Fallon with Donald Trump. But you know who originally dared Jimmy Fallon to touch Trump’s hair? Hillary Clinton. “Watch the old video. You may be startled at how vibrant and energetic she was back then.”
Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event. If she continues with a light campaign schedule, you should assume my observation is valid, and she wasn’t at 100%.
Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage. That would be true if she also looked healthy in general, and her campaign schedule from here on out is full. We’ll know more this week, based on her schedule.
Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. I’m already hearing on Twitter that mentioning a woman’s smile is sexist. I understand the point. But when someone goes full Joker-face and tests the uncanny valley hypothesis at the same time, that’s a bit different from telling a woman to “smile more.” My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.
Remember how Trump’s unpopularity was going to sink GOP Senate candidates? Yeah, not so much.
