OPINION:
The avalanche dump of emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, keep coming from WikiLeaks, exposing the insider nature and corruption within the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party. Here’s an updated list.
1. Clinton Foundation donors expected “benefits in return for gifts.”
The Daily Caller uncovered an independent “governance review” by a law firm that specializes in nonprofits. The review was requested by Mrs. Clinton’s daughter Chelsea who had concerns about the Clinton Foundation and potential conflict-of-interests with its donors, and was sharply opposed by her father’s friends and donors. The review, conducted in December 2010, concluded many of the foundation’s donors had “an expectation of a quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts.”
2. Obama’s Cabinet picked by Citigroup executive — during the bailout — a month before the election.
The New Republic uncovered an email from Michael Froman, who was an executive at Citigroup during 2008’s election, that listed potential Cabinet picks in an Obama administration, a month before the general election. The bank was being bailed out at the time.
The revelations reinforce “the need for critical scrutiny of Hillary Clinton, and for advocacy to ensure the next transition doesn’t go like the last, at least with respect to the same old Democrats scooping up all the positions of power well in advance,” the New Republic wrote.
3. Mrs. Clinton tried to save a profitable Wall Street speech before her campaign launch.
Mrs. Clinton didn’t want her husband’s speech before Morgan Stanley to be canceled before her campaign rollout, despite the bad optics, Breitbart reported.
“HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” Huma Abedin said. “I will have to tell her that WJC chose to cancel it, not that we asked.”
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook argued that continuing on with the speech would be a political risk, saying it would be “begging for a bad rollout.”
4. Qatar, an Islamic State funder, gave former President Bill Clinton $1 million for his birthday.
Qatar gave the Clinton Foundation $1 million for Mr. Clinton’s birthday present in 2012. Ami Desai, director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, told several staffers about the check.
“[Qatar] Would like to see WJC ’for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011,” Mr. Desai wrote.
In a 2014 email, Mrs. Clinton said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both giving financial and logistical support to the Islamic State terror group and other extremist Sunni groups.
5. Mrs. Clinton team poll-tested attacks on Obama’s Muslim heritage.
An email exchange between Mr. Podesta, Paul Begala and a Clinton pollster worked a list of negatives about Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign. The pollster wrote, “we have reworked the Obama message into the survey as requested,” and then lists the negatives, including: “* 7 Obama (owe-BAHM-uh)’s father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country.”
Mr. Begala told the New York Post on Thursday that the poll was to test potential right-wing attacks on Mr. Obama to prepare him for the general election and was not used by the Clinton campaign.
6. Mrs. Clinton discussed hiding emails from Mr. Obama, then deleted them.
On March 4, 2015, Mr. Podesta wrote Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer Cheryl Mills about hiding Mrs. Clinton’s emails to Mr. Obama from congressional investigators. The day before, her team was subpoenaed to turn over all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
“Think we should hold emails to and from potus?” Mr. Podesta asked. “That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but seems like they will.”
Three weeks later, Mrs. Clinton’s team BleachBit more than 33,000 emails.
7. Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman urged her to lie to the public on whether she sent classified information.
Bloomberg News reported Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman Brian Fallon urged her to issue a blanket denial that she ever sent classified information through her private email server because anything less could open her up to charges she broke the law.
“We should not think it is fine to find something that ’should have been classified at the time,’ ” Mr. Fallon, the spokesman, wrote to other top campaign officials on Aug. 22, 2015, as they debated a statement Mrs. Clinton would make on her use of an email server in her home.
“Our position is that no such material exists, else it could be said she mishandled classified info,” Mr. Fallon wrote.
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