Amidst the media storm surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, Stefan Molyneux identifies the larger patterns within the Clinton Cash/Clinton Foundation controversy. Are the Clintons corrupt? What does their questionable behavior say about politics as a whole? Learn about the practice of selling power in this latest installment of True News.
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| Hi, everybody. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio. | |
| We're going to take a quick tour through the greatest hits of potential Clinton corruptions over the past few decades. | |
| The list does go on and on, but I've tried to extract what I think are the most important and instructive potential conflicts of interest, let's say. | |
| Starting back in 1978, 1979, yes, it was summertime, the living was easy, the lapels and bell bottoms were huge, and Hillary Clinton, whose husband Bill, of course, was then the governor of Arkansas, decided to engage in a little derivatives trading in the cattle market, was able to turn a $1,000 investment into $100,000 in only 10 months. | |
| I'm sure using some weird trick on the internet. | |
| Now, the brokerage firm that facilitated a large number of the trades that Hillary was doing allowed her to purchase $12,000 worth of derivatives with her $1,000 initial investment. | |
| Now, this same firm was under investigation for malpractice and was later sued on the grounds of having manipulated prices in the cattle market. | |
| So... | |
| Is it possible that if you're under investigation, you might try to help out the governor's wife with some preferential knowledge or preferential trades, given that you've been accused of manipulating the prices in the cattle market, which is the same market she used to turn $1,000 into $100,000 over the course of 10 months? | |
| Now, the Clintons denied accusations of disguised bribery and conflict of interest. | |
| There was never an official investigation or charge of wrongdoing. | |
| Hillary also maintained that she made the trading decisions herself, despite lacking experience in the stock market. | |
| A veteran in the stock market, on hearing about this spectacular profit, said, It's a mockery of the profession to say you took $1,000 and made $100,000. | |
| For that, you need the Fed. | |
| Presidential pardons was a big deal after Clinton left the White House after his second term. | |
| He granted 140 presidential pardons on his final day in office, not to a substantial number of turkeys. | |
| Now, amidst the myriad of political allies who were granted clemency was billionaire Mark Rich, I suppose father of Richie, who had fled the United States in the 80s after he was indicted on 65 criminal counts, which included tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and a violation of the Iran trade embargo during the 79-81 hostage crisis. | |
| Now, you get a presidential pardon. | |
| And, as it turns out, your ex-wife, Rich's ex-wife, had donated a million dollars to the Democratic National Convention and $450,000 to Bill's library fund and over $100,000 to Hillary's Senate campaign. | |
| Now, addressing the numerous accusations of bribery over the mock-rich pardon, Bill stated, There was absolutely no quid pro quo. | |
| Indeed, other friends and financial supporters sought pardons in cases which, after careful consideration based on the information available to me, I determined I could not grant. | |
| Ah, also it was found that Hillary's brother had received $400,000 to gain a pardon for a businessman convicted of fraud and drug trafficking. | |
| Upon this discovery, Hillary's brother received a slap on the wrist and had to return the money. | |
| While the Clintons denied any knowledge of the shady deal, the businessman and the drug trafficker walked free. | |
| You've probably heard a lot about the Clinton Foundation. | |
| It's a non-profit organization. | |
| It was set up by Bill Clinton after he completed his second term as president, and its supposed primary focus is philanthropic work. | |
| Now, the Clinton Foundation takes in a lot of money from foreign companies and foreign governments. | |
| So when Hillary became U.S. Secretary of State, she signed a Memorandum of Understanding, pledging on behalf of the Foundation to stop accepting donations from foreign governments unless they were approved by the State Department's And to publish an annual list of all donors who had contributed to the operations of the Clinton Foundation. | |
| So remember, there's two things, right? | |
| No donations from foreign governments unless it's approved by the State Department Ethics Office and publish all the donors who have contributed to the operations of the Clinton Foundation. | |
| There's full transparency and so on. | |
| And of course, Congress and everyone who was involved in appointing her was pretty nervous about the potential conflict of interest that would have arisen from a bunch of people donating to the Clinton Foundation, foreign governments, foreign companies, while they were also lobbying the State Department, which Hillary Clinton was in charge of. | |
| So the memorandum was hailed as a, quote, guarantee that transparency and public scrutiny would be brought to bear on activities that posed any potential conflicts of interest with State Department business. | |
| Yet, it didn't outline any penalties for violating its terms. | |
| Neither a law, nor a good idea, just a suggestion. | |
| I mean, no penalties. | |
| It's not like she was speeding or something, or texting, and... | |
| Anyway, we'll get to that. | |
| Now... | |
| Under U.S. law, it's illegal for a political campaign to accept donations from foreign governments. | |
| But organizations like the Clinton Foundation are exempt from this rule, and Hillary's pledge was supposed to alleviate concerns about a potential bribery through, quote, charitable donations. | |
| Because, see, if you donate money to the... | |
| If you give money to a husband, it's the same as giving money to a wife under the law. | |
| You can't sort of get around bribery laws by bribing the spouse. | |
| It's the same deal. | |
| So remember, two pledges in this memorandum of understanding. | |
| The foundation violated both pledges shortly after the memorandum was signed. | |
| As the Reuters news agency reported, quote, at the outset, the Clinton Foundation did indeed publish what they said was a complete list of the names of more than 200,000 donors. | |
| And has continued to update it. | |
| But in a breach of the pledge, the charity's flagship health program, which spends more than half of all the other foundation initiatives put together, stopped making the annual disclosure in 2010. | |
| Now, not only did the Clinton Health Access Initiative fail to report millions of dollars in foreign government donations, but it never sought the approval of the State Department Ethics Office either. | |
| Reuters noted in March, quote, the State Department said it was unable to cite any instances of its officials reviewing or approving new money from any foreign governments. | |
| After a month of repeated questions from the media, the charity finally admitted that it never initiated a review of foreign contributions to its budget while Hillary was in office. | |
| So that was the deal. | |
| You can be Secretary of State, you've got to tell us who's donating, and you've got to let us approve if it's foreign governments. | |
| Neither of which happened. | |
| Now, they were supposed to, the Clinton Foundation was supposed to publish its donors to make sure there was no conflict of interest. | |
| But they were able to circumvent the donor transparency clause by funneling donations through an affiliated Canadian charity run by a soon-to-recurred billionaire, Frank Gustra, a close friend of the Clintons and a board member of their foundation. | |
| So, using this scheme, sort of laundering the list of donors, Clinton's managed to hide the identities of 1,100 donors who'd made donations to the affiliate organization. | |
| The CEO of the foundation claimed, this is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency. | |
| Unlike in the U.S., under Canadian law, all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor. | |
| However, Canadian law experts are highly dubious of this claim. | |
| Now, another thing that was really quite astounding was as soon as Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, Bill Clinton's speaking fees doubled or tripled. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Maybe he got some soft shoe numbers in. | |
| Maybe he did some yodeling. | |
| Maybe he did some fire juggling or swore a taxpayer in half or buried himself under interns. | |
| I don't know. | |
| But he clearly upped his game. | |
| It couldn't have anything to do with his wife becoming Secretary of State, why people would want to hire Bill Clinton to speak at their engagements for $250,000, $500,000, $750,000 a pop. | |
| And also, not only did Bill Clinton's speaking fees go up massively after his wife became Secretary of State, The moment she left, resigned as Secretary of State. | |
| The Canadian affiliates' revenues for the Clinton Foundation, their revenues dropped by 86% to 94%. | |
| So, there's no smoking gun, I guess you could say, but, hmm. | |
| So, it's not just foreign governments that raise suspicions of a conflict of interest. | |
| The Vox News site has reported, quote, at least 181 companies, individuals, and foreign governments, That have given to the Clinton Foundation also lobbied the State Department when Hillary Clinton ran the place. | |
| This long list of companies includes J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, I guess currently rolling in all the Greek dough they got from lying about Greek finances to get them into the EU, because that didn't have any problems, did it? | |
| Shell, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Pfizer, NBCUniversal, and even Coca-Cola. | |
| The Clinton Foundation has already dropped the ban on foreign government donations and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising questions as to whether Hillary Clinton is evading or avoiding any possible conflicts of interest as she ramps up an expected bid for the presidency in 2016. | |
| Now, I'd like to give you a list of governments. | |
| Oh, just tell me what springs to mind. | |
| Algeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. | |
| Just a few. | |
| Generosity, kindness, philanthropy, respect for women and minorities. | |
| Do those float to the top of your mental fish tank? | |
| I do not think that they do. | |
| Well, I shouldn't say that. | |
| So, let's talk about Saudi Arabia, for instance, does have a very benevolent streak, the government. | |
| I mean, when they chop off the hands of a suspected thief, or they behead someone in a public square, they really do take care to sharpen the swords to disinfect them, make sure there's no infections. | |
| When they stone women to death for suspected adultery, they use pretty large rocks, you know, to bludgeon the women to death fairly quickly. | |
| Also, when atheists or agnostic bloggers are sentenced to say a thousand lashes on the back for questioning some aspect of the dominant religiosity, sometimes, again, under intense international pressure, Again, under intense international pressure, they will give a certain span of time for the backs of these poor people to heal so that they can continue with the thousand lashes without killing them outright. | |
| So a lot of generosity, kindness and philanthropy and, of course, respect for women, which is what Hillary Clinton is all about. | |
| So given how kind all of these governments are, these dictatorships, It makes sense that they would spend a lot of money supporting the Clinton Foundation. | |
| So, let's take a look at three examples as to why foreign corporations and governments might be interested in helping out the Clinton Foundation. | |
| So, in 2012, there were these huge outcries that Pacific Rubiales, a Colombian oil company with its headquarters in Canada, had employed the country's military to violently quell a union strike. | |
| So, amidst all of these outcries, a Hillary-led State Department certified to the U.S. Congress that Columbia's government and military are complying with human rights standards, thus paving the way for a U.S.-Colombian trade bank. | |
| Now, what's weird is that just a couple of years earlier, as a presidential candidate in 2008, Hillary publicly denounced Columbia's human rights track record, specifically highlighting how union leaders are subjected to intimidation by local governments. | |
| So what, oh what, oh what might have changed her mind in the span of four years? | |
| Yeah, I think you're getting it. | |
| The Clintons, during this time, were developing a budding relationship with the founder of Pacific Rubiales, Frank Gustra. | |
| Yeah, the same guy whose Canadian charity funneled money to the Clinton Foundation while hiding the identities of the donors. | |
| So furthermore, the oil company alongside its founder had already pledged millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. | |
| I mean, of course, oil magnates who intimidate their workers mafia-style clearly care about philanthropy. | |
| So, she thinks that Colombia's really bad. | |
| A good friend, who is the head of Pacific Rubiales, pledges millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and then there's Hillary testifying that Columbia is great. | |
| Let's get a trade pact going on that will really benefit my friend. | |
| Now, let's look at another one. | |
| Rosatom, a Russian state-run nuclear energy conglomerate, wanted to purchase a controlling stake in Uranium-1, a Canadian company, but it ran into a roadblock. | |
| The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. | |
| So Uranium One, the Canadian company, owns a fifth of U.S. uranium reserves. | |
| You know, the stuff that is used to make nuclear weapons, say. | |
| And so the purchase had to be approved by the American government. | |
| While the sale was pending approval by the U.S. government, Uranium One investors started making donations to the Clinton Foundation. | |
| Now, the acquisition of uranium one was eventually approved, allowing Russia to effectively take control of a substantial chunk of America's uranium. | |
| Now, Hillary's department didn't have sole control over the decision, but it seems kind of doubtful that investors would commit millions of dollars to a specific cause without some expectation of a payout. | |
| But maybe the Russians are just wonderfully charitable, as we've seen in many places throughout history and across the world, and they just throw money at the incorruptible Clintons out of the goodness of their stony hearts. | |
| Keystone XL, this is the pipe that is supposed to carry oil from Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico, I think, and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, particularly Middle Eastern oil. | |
| So back in 2014, 30 leading environmental organizations urged Hillary to take a stand against Keystone XL oil pipeline, but she still refuses to talk about it. | |
| At a recent Canadian conference, she said, you won't get me to talk about Keystone because I have steadily made clear I am not going to express an opinion. | |
| Now, for those who don't know, the environmental lobby gives a lot of money to the Democrat political party, which of course is Hillary's party. | |
| Why would she go against the powerful environmental lobby? | |
| Well, as it turns out, in 2014, a Canadian government agency that has been lobbying for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline donated half a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. | |
| Going back in time even further, only four, count them, four days after Hillary was announced as the nominee for the State Department head, Bill Clinton was already in Canada delivering the first of ten speeches commissioned by one of Keystone XL's largest shareholders, the Toronto Dominion Bank. | |
| He was paid half a million dollars for this speech and close to two million dollars in total for all of his TD Bank speaking engagements over the next two and a half years. | |
| So the TD Bank really wants... | |
| Keystone XL to go through. | |
| Canadian government gives money to the Clinton Foundation and the TD Bank, which is one of the largest shareholders, gets Bill Clinton for massively inflated speaking engagement fees. | |
| Because what the hell is Bill Clinton going to tell TD Banking about Canadian banking? | |
| I know more about Canadian banking than what Clinton does. | |
| I'm not getting paid half a million dollars for a speech. | |
| Now, this stuff goes on and on, and you can find out more about this in the media, or you can read the book Clinton Cash. | |
| We're just presenting a tiny portion of this, and the defense generally that comes out from Clinton supporters is, hey man, there's no smoking gun. | |
| You can't prove anything. | |
| Well, that's true. | |
| There is no smoking gun. | |
| Shockingly, no secret... | |
| The contracts written in the bloods of unicorns in their prime has come out, and no one has come out of the shadows and said, oh yeah, I did a shady deal that's illegal. | |
| No kidding, right? | |
| So we can only speculate, of course, about the behavior of the Clintons, whether it's suspicious or not, and so on. | |
| But we can judge the Clintons relative to U.S. law and to their own standards, the standards that they publicly support and espouse. | |
| So, in the United States, there is something called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, under which American corporations are forbidden from donating to politically connected charities overseas in the hopes of influencing foreign affairs. | |
| And you can't just say, well, it's not bribery because I gave to the husband's charity. | |
| I mean, this is too obvious, right? | |
| So, for an example... | |
| For example, charges were brought against a pharmaceutical company, an American pharmaceutical company, that donated to a Polish charity without properly reflecting the payment in its records. | |
| A Polish government official sat on the charity's board, which raised suspicions of bribery. | |
| American pharmaceutical company donates money to a Polish charity. | |
| It doesn't properly reflect the payments in its records. | |
| There's a potential conflict of interest. | |
| Charges are brought against the company. | |
| You don't need a smoking gun when it comes to bribery. | |
| That's what the whole point of the Memorandum of Understanding was, to avoid any situation where conflict of interest might be hidden. | |
| And the fact that Hillary Clinton signed that Memorandum of Understanding, and then both she and the Clinton Foundation broke the rules almost before the ink was dried, is all you need to know. | |
| They didn't need to prove in this U.S. pharma company, when they brought charges against the U.S. pharma company, they didn't need to prove anything, just that they didn't disclose. | |
| Now, interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton herself was a very strong supporter of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and she exclaimed in a speech, This administration, like those before us, has taken a strong stand when it comes to American companies bribing foreign officials. | |
| We are unequivocally opposed to weakening the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. | |
| So we can judge her behavior relative to the laws that she wishes to impose on other people. | |
| But of course I forget. | |
| Why would you want to be in charge to subject yourself to the laws? | |
| That would make no sense whatsoever. | |
| So, there is, of course, a lot of quid pro quo, under the hand stuff that goes on in politics. | |
| It was Joe Biden, I think, who said, oh yeah, someone donates a lot to your political campaign. | |
| When they call you up, you take the meeting. | |
| That's just how you get to the top. | |
| People don't get to the top in politics unless they're really good at giving people back something for their donations. | |
| That's how the whole thing works. | |
| So this is not an indictment of the Clintons in particular. | |
| This is how the whole system works. | |
| And, of course, the whole system needs to be reexamined. | |
| It's funny, you know, because people think that the government is necessary to enforce contracts. | |
| Well, if the government wasn't around there enforcing contracts, it'd be chaos! | |
| Well, first of all, that can only be said by somebody who's never tried to use the government to enforce a contract, which costs years and millions of dollars sometimes. | |
| And secondly, the government itself... | |
| Particularly Western democratic governments where governments have a huge amount of control of the economic affairs of the nation. | |
| Well, you donate. | |
| Corporations donate. | |
| Not directly. | |
| They can't directly. | |
| But corporations get money to politicians either through PACs or through fundraisers or something like that. | |
| So corporations get money to politicians in return for political favors. | |
| This is how it works. | |
| Everybody knows this. | |
| And none of this is ever written down and none of it is ever legally enforceable. | |
| In fact, it's illegal to bribe any kind of government official. | |
| But that's how the whole system works. | |
| It's kind of funny how we think we need the government to enforce contracts when modern democracy, I won't say works, I'll say functions on illegal, unenforceable contracts, all of which are honored and work. | |
| So it's just a way of looking at the question of the degree to which we need government for contract enforcement that I think is kind of illuminating. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux for Free Domain Radio. | |
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