CONNOR HOFFMAN
News Editor
The Clinton Foundation has been in the national headlines lately, and for good reason: this foundation reeks of corruption. The Foundation may have recently just announced that it would not accept foreign donations if Hillary Clinton is elected president, according to CNN, but it’s very doubtful the Foundation will seriously do that. Even if it does, the real damage may have already been done.
In 1997, the Clinton Foundation was formed to fundraise money for the construction of the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Then, starting in the early 2000s, the Clinton Foundation started doing charity work to stop the spread of HIV in Africa, according to the Washington Post. Although the Foundation does do some great charity work, don’t be fooled. This foundation is among the biggest pay-for-play scams in American politics right now.
This foundation has raised $2 billion since 2001, and along the way it has definitely made some shady and corrupt deals. According to The Federalist, the Clinton State Department in 2011 approved a total of $165 billion commercial arms sales to 20 countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation that year. In fact, Saudi Arabia donated at least $10 million to the Foundation in 2011, and the State Department cleared them for a $29 billion arms sale.
Clinton violated an ethics agreement she made with the Obama administration in 2008 that said she wouldn’t accept new foreign donors during her time as secretary of state.The most noticeable case was when the Foundation accepted a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government in 2010.
Clinton continued these kinds of deals throughout her time as secretary of state. Perhaps the most worrisome and corrupt deal was made in 2013, when Secretary Clinton agreed to the sale of 20 percent of our uranium supply to Uranium One, a uranium company owned by Russia. The Russian energy company Rosatom had taken over control of the majority of Uranium One, a company centered in Canada. According to The New York Times, Uranium One made four donations totaling $2.35 million right before Clinton decided to approve the uranium deal to them.
Also, recent emails have been released from the Clinton Foundation, and they show us that Clinton sold out access to herself.
While Clinton was secretary of state, at least 85 of the 154 people from private interests who she met with or had phone conversations with were donors to the Foundation. These 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million to the Foundation.
Recent emails released by Judicial Watch show us that Clinton may have even traded favors for foundation donors. According to The New York Times, in one email the Foundation asked Clinton’s adviser, Huma Abedin, to try and find a job in the state department for a foundation associate.
Another thing to consider is that even if Clinton does close off the Foundation to foreign donors, they could still funnel money through other channels. Several experts believe it would be very easy for foreign donors to figure out how to channel money to the Clinton Foundation through domestic companies, such as Karen Hobart Flynn, the president of the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause. According to her, one way would be for these foreign donors to set up a limited liability corporation.
“You could have some kind of LLC or other partnership where it isn’t even clear who the donors are,” said Flynn in an interview with The Hill.
Clinton was not able to keep the promises she made to the Obama administration, so don’t let her fool us all again. We cannot have a president who is owned by all kinds of shady foreign interests. We should force them to either shut the Foundation down or hand over control completely to someone else.