Clinton Foundation Timeline
2009 - 2010: FBI watches then acts as Russian spy moves closer to Hillary Clinton

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov receives a “reset” button from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Geneva Switzerland, March, 2009. (Credit: CNN)

“As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama’s chief diplomat, federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin’s machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of State, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records.

Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal.

A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a major Democratic donor in hopes of gaining intelligence on Hillary Clinton’s department, records show. The spy was arrested and deported as she moved closer to getting inside State, agents said.

Other activities were perfectly legal and sitting in plain view, such as when a subsidiary of Russia’s state-controlled nuclear energy company hired a Washington firm to lobby the Obama administration. At the time it was hired, the firm was providing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in pro bono support to Bill Clinton’s global charitable initiative, and it legally helped the Russian company secure federal decisions that led to billions in new U.S. commercial nuclear business, records show.

Agents were surprised by the timing and size of a $500,000 check that a Kremlin-linked bank provided Bill Clinton with for a single speech in the summer of 2010. The payday came just weeks after Hillary Clinton helped arrange for American executives to travel to Moscow to support Putin’s efforts to build his own country’s version of Silicon Valley, agents said.

There is no evidence in any of the public records that the FBI believed that the Clintons or anyone close to them did anything illegal. But there’s definitive evidence the Russians were seeking their influence with a specific eye on the State Department.

“There is not one shred of doubt from the evidence that we had that the Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton’s circle, because she was the quarterback of the Obama-Russian reset strategy and the assumed successor to Obama as president,” said a source familiar with the FBI’s evidence at the time, speaking only on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.” (Read more: The Hill, 10/22/2017)

March 2009 - 2014: The Clintons and the Clinton Foundation benefit after Hillary Clinton helps Swiss bank UBS

Clinton appears with Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, (left), at the State Department on July 31, 2009, announcing a settlement in a legal case involving UBS. (Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / The Associated Press)

“In 2007, a whistleblower gave information about thousands of US citizens who were putting money in Swiss mega-bank UBS to avoid paying US taxes. The IRS [Internal Revenue Service] sues UBS to learn the identities of US citizens with secret bank accounts. UBS faces either complying and violating strict Swiss banking secrecy laws, or refusing and facing criminal charges in a US court.

The US government decides to treat this as a political matter with the Swiss government instead of just a legal problem with the bank. In March 2009, Clinton meets with Swiss officials and brings up a number of unrelated issues where the US wants help from Switzerland, such as using Swiss neutrality to help release a US citizen imprisoned in Iran. The Swiss help with these other issues, and appear to get concessions in the UBS case in return.

On July 31, 2009, Clinton announces a legal settlement: the US government dismisses the IRS lawsuit, and UBS turns over data on only 4,450 accounts instead of the 52,000 accounts worth $18 billion wanted by the IRS.

Some US politicians criticize the deal. For instance, Senator Carl Levin (D), says, “It is disappointing that the US government went along.” A senior IRS official will later complain that many US citizens escaped scrutiny due to the deal.

Former president Bill Clinton and UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive, Bob McCann, took the stage at a Clinton Global Initiative event in 2011. (Credit: Brian Kersey /UPI/ Landov)

UBS then helps the Clintons in various ways:

  • Total UBS donations to the Clinton Foundation grow from less than $60,000 through 2008 to about $600,000 by the end of 2014.
  • Starting in early 2010, UBS works with the foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, and lends the programs $32 million. In 2012, the foundation will tout these programs as one of their major accomplishments.
  • UBS gives the foundation $100,000 for a charity golf tournament.
  • In 2011, UBS pays Bill Clinton $350,000 for discussing the economy at a UBS event.
  • Also in 2011, UBS pays Bill Clinton $1.5 million to take part in eleven question and answer sessions with a UBS official, making UBS his largest corporate source of speech income.  

(Wall Street Journal, 7/30/2015), The Atlantic, 7/31/2015)

March 6, 2009 - From Russia with Money, Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism

On March 6, 2009 in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presents Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red “reset” button. (Credit: public domain)

• A major technology transfer component of the Russian reset overseen by Hillary Clinton substantially enhanced the Russian military’s technological capabilities, according to both the FBI and the U.S. Army.

• Russian government officials and American corporations participated in the technology transfer project overseen by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton

• A Putin-­‐‑connected Russian government fund transferred $35 million to a small company with Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta on its executive board, which included senior Russian officials.

• John Podesta failed to reveal, as required by law on his federal financial disclosures, his membership on the board of this offshore company.

• Podesta also headed up a think tank which wrote favorably about the Russian reset while apparently  receiving millions from Kremlin-­‐‑linked Russian oligarchs via an offshore LLC.

(The Government Accountability Institute, 8/2016)

Clinton's top staffers provide help for a top Clinton Foundation donor due to a request from the Clinton Foundation.

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Gilbert Chagoury, Chairman of The Chagoury Group (left), Bill Clinton (center) and Ronald Chagoury, Chief Executive Officer (right) attend the Eko Atlantic City Dedication Ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria on February 21st, 2012. (Credit: public domain)

Douglas Band sends an email to Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills and Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin. At the time, Band is both working for the Clinton Foundation and serving as a personal aide to former President Bill Clinton. Band asks for the State Department’s “substance person” in Lebanon to contact Gilbert Chagoury. “As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp [important].”

Abedin responds that the “substance person” Is “Jeff Feltman,” a former US ambassador to Lebanon. “I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to Jeff.”

Fifteen minutes later, Band sends another email to Abedin, writing, “Better if you call him. Now preferable. This is very important.” After some redacted text, he adds, “He’s awake I’m sure.”
(US Department of State, 6/30/2016)

CBS News will late call Chagoury “a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire philanthropist who was one of the Clinton Foundation’s top donors.” He gave between $1 and $5 million to the foundation. In addition, he pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. He was convicted in 2000 in Switzerland for money laundering,  but agreed to a plea deal and repaid $66 million.

Upon becoming secretary of state earlier in 2009, Clinton promised to avoid any possible conflict of interest between State Department work and Clinton Foundation work. (Judicial Watch, 8/12/2016) (CBS News, 8/10/2016)

In August 2016, a spokesperson for Chagoury will claim that Chagoury had been seeking to contact someone in the State Department to offer his perspective on the coming elections in Lebanon, and had not been seeking official action by the State Department. (Politico, 8/11/2016)

April 25, 2009 - Judicial Watch uncovers Clinton emails with pay to play revelations

Gilbert Chagoury, Chairman of The Chagoury Group (left), Bill Clinton (center) and Ronald Chagoury, Chief Executive Officer (right) attend the Eko Atlantic City Dedication Ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria on February 21st, 2012. (Credit: public domain)

“This week we released 296 pages of State Department records containing 44 email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department. This brings the known total to 171 of new Clinton emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

The new documents reveal that in April 2009 controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band pushed for a job for an associate. In the email, Band tells Hillary Clinton’s former aides at the State Department, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, that it is “important to take care of [Redacted]. Band is reassured by Abedin that, “Personnel has been sending him options.” Band was co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative.

Included is a 2009 email in which Band directs Abedin and Mills to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon.  Band notes that Chagoury is “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us,” and insists that Abedin call Amb. Jeffrey Feltman to connect him to Chagoury.

Chagoury, a foreign national, is a close friend of former President Bill Clinton and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation.  He has appeared near the top of the Foundation’s donor list as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. He also pledged $1 billion to the ClintonGlobal Initiative. According to a 2010 investigation by PBS Frontline, Chagoury was convicted in 2000 in Switzerland for laundering money from Nigeria, but agreed to a plea deal and repaid $66 million to the Nigerian government.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 8/12/2016)

September 21, 2009 - Clinton meets with major Wall Street and business leaders and it is omitted from her official calendar

Hillary Clinton, rings the New York Stock opening bell, accompanied by then-NYSE CEO Duncan L. Niederauer, in New York on September 21, 2009. (Credit: Richard Drew/The Associated Press)

“An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or omitted the names of those she met.

The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure — in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror the other, more detailed records of her daily meetings.

At a time when Clinton’s private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the “risk of the personal being accessible” — as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the government but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide’s inbox.

Clinton attends a meeting with New York Stock Exchange president Duncan Niederauer and various business leaders on September 21, 2009. (Credit: public domain)

The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page calendar with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day’s events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.

In one key omission, Clinton’s State Department calendar dropped the identities of a dozen major Wall Street and business leaders who met with her during a private breakfast discussion at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2009, The meeting occurred minutes before Clinton appeared in public at the exchange to ring the market’s ceremonial opening bell.

Despite the omission, Clinton’s State Department planning schedules from the same day listed the names of all Clinton’s breakfast guests — most of whose firms had lobbied the government and donated to her family’s global charity. The event was closed to the press and merited only a brief mention in her calendar, which omitted all her guests’ names — among them Blackstone Group Chairman Steven Schwarzman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and then-New York Bank of Mellon CEO Robert Kelly.

Clinton’s calendar also repeatedly omitted private dinners and meetings with political donors, policy sessions with groups of corporate leaders and “drop-bys” with old Clinton campaign hands and advisers. Among those whose names were omitted from her calendar were longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, consultant and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former energy lobbyist Joseph Wilson and entertainment magnate and Clinton campaign bundler Haim Saban.” (Read more: The Associated Press, 6/24/2016)

October 2009 - SoS Hillary launches USAID's PREDICT, a project to study emerging pandemic threats; Metabiota founded by Nathan Wolfe in 2008 becomes a partner; Hunter Biden later invests in Metabiota in Ukraine

January 1, 2010 - the Clinton Foundation incorrectly reports to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments

IRS Logo (Credit: public domain)

“For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.

Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation’s work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation’s annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.

“We are prioritizing an external review to ensure the accuracy of the 990s from 2010, 2011 and 2012 and expect to refile when the review is completed,” Craig Minassian, a foundation spokesman, said in an email.” (Read more: Reuters, 4/23/15)

2010 - 2011: The Haitian schools the Clinton Foundation never built

CHF Int’l President & CEO, David Weiss making remarks in Liberia during the official indoor program held at the Logan Town Wesleyan Church. (Credit: public domain)

(…) “USAID contracts to remove debris in Port-au-Prince went to a Washington-based company named CHF International [now known as Global Communities]. The company’s CEO David Weiss, a campaign contributor to Hillary in 2008, was deputy U.S. trade representative for North American Affairs during the Clinton administration. The corporate secretary of the board, Lauri Fitz-Pegado, served in a number of posts in the Clinton administration, including assistant secretary of commerce.The Clintons claim to have built schools in Haiti. But the New York Times discovered that when it comes to the Clintons, “built” is a term with a very loose interpretation. For example, the newspaper located a school featured in the Clinton Foundation annual report as “built through a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action.” In reality, “The Clinton Foundation’s sole direct contribution to the school was a grant for an Earth Day celebration and tree-building activity.”

The Clintons claim to have built schools in Haiti. But the New York Times discovered that when it comes to the Clintons, ‘built’ is a term with a very loose interpretation.

A demonstrator holds up a sign showing images of former President Bill Clinton that asks where the aid money for reconstruction went during a protest demanding the resignation of President Michel Martelly in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015. (Credit: Dieu Nalio Chery/The Associated Press))

USAID contracts also went to consulting firms such as New York–based Dalberg Global Development Advisors, which received a $1.5 million contract to identify relocation sites for Haitians. This company is an active participant and financial supporter of the Clinton Global Initiative. A later review by USAID’s inspector general found that Dalberg did a terrible job, naming uninhabitable mountains with steep ravines as possible sites for Haitian rebuilding.

Foreign governments and foreign companies got Haitian deals in exchange for bankrolling the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation lists the Brazilian construction firm OAS and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) as donors that have given it between $1 billion and $5 billion.

The IDB receives funding from the State Department, and some of this funding was diverted to OAS for Haitian road-building contracts. Yet an IDB auditor, Mariela Antiga, complained that the contracts were padded with “excessive costs” to build roads “no one needed.” Antiga also alleged that IDB funds were going to a construction project on private land owned by former Haitian president Rene Preval — a Clinton buddy — and several of his cronies. For her efforts to expose corruption, Antiga was promptly instructed by the IDB to pack her bags and leave Haiti.”  (Read more: National Review, 7/18/2016)

2010 - Dr. Dady Chery and Charles Ortel: ‘Clinton Robin Hood in Reverse Must Be Punished’

“Despite the polls in the run up to November 8, 2016, and the post-election shenanigans that continue to this day, the United States has a new President, and it is not Hillary Clinton. There are many reasons for this, and Charles Ortel’s dogged, two-year investigation of the Clintons’ predatory humanitarianism is a major one. He is not yet done. It is almost universally unacceptable to prey on the weak of one’s own species. There are laws and religious precepts against this in every human culture. In fact, as humans, we find it so heinous to prey on the helpless that, contrary to all biological rules, we prey on the strong, and not the sick, young, and injured, even when we hunt other species. The Clintons and their associates are not above the law, and Ortel, with his credentials as a graduate of the Harvard Business School, decades of Wall Street experience, and accurate assessment in 2008 of General Electric stock as being overvalued, is taking his investigation to the next level. I caught up with him last week for the following interview.” – Dr. Dady Chery

UNICEF Haiti

(Credit: The United Nations)

DC: Charles, we now know that former President Barack Obama did not pardon former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

CO: The pardons would have been for the Clinton family and others for federal offenses arising from the illegal operation of, and solicitation for, numerous so-called charities. The apparent failure to pardon removes a major excuse that US state, federal, and foreign government authorities may have had for failing to investigate, expose, prosecute, and win criminal convictions in what I believe to be the largest charity fraud ever attempted.

It will take time to replace federal government employees inside the Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Trade Commission, who likely were complicit in a scheme to impede and obstruct investigations into this ongoing charity-fraud conspiracy. Given time, I certainly hope the Trump administration will increase the resources for the rumored investigations by the FBI and the IRS, which should address widespread illegal solicitation and operations in virtually every US state and numerous foreign countries. I also hope that the Trump administration will work closely with foreign-government donors who either were complicit in these charity frauds, or who should now be working hard to recover funds advanced to Clinton charities under false pretenses.

CODC-c

(Credit: US Department of State)

DC: Now that the Clinton Global Initiative has shut down its operations, will there be access to its documents? Are the people who were involved with CGI still responsible to show to the IRS and other government agencies that its affairs are in order?

CO: Unlike investigations into Ponzi schemes and other frauds involving for-profit entities, investigators wield enormous leverage when they finally decide to look into frauds by not-for-profit entities. Review of New York and other state laws, IRS regulations and practices, and laws in relevant countries suggest that the executives, directors, and their professional advisors will bear the burden of proving that they organized and then operated the various Clinton charities lawfully at all times. Losing or obscuring records will hurt those who are potentially liable, and I would note that criminal penalties for organizing and operating charity frauds, particularly disaster-relief charity frauds, are onerous.

William J. Clinton (right, facing camera), United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti and former President of the United States of America, visits downtown Port-au-Prince's General Hospital during his one-day trip to earthquake-devastated Haiti. 18/Jan/2010. Port-au-Prince, Haiti. UN Photo/Logan Abassi. www.un.org/av/photo/

(Credit: US Department of State)

DC: Many people confuse the Clinton Global Initiative, which recently closed its doors, with the Clinton Foundation. Is the CGI a legal entity, and how does it relate to the Clinton Foundation?

CO: The CGI began to operate in New York by September 2005, illegally, as a concept. Under US law, a validly organized charity cannot be a formless association; instead it must be a lawfully constituted entity. In most cases, the trustees or directors of a lawfully organized charity choose to establish a nonprofit corporation under US state laws; after this, they get federal tax exemption on the basis of a detailed application that must be filled out truthfully and accurately, and that states their specific purposes, which are then authorized by the IRS. There’s no record anywhere that the Clinton Foundation validly changed its authorized purposes. Originally, in January 1998, these were to erect a presidential archive, establish a research facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raise a capital endowment. So, starting with the first CGI Annual Meeting in Manhattan, the Clinton Foundation became engaged in substantial activities that were not authorized, or even charitable. Disclosures in the IRS filings for the Clinton Foundation show that CGI activities were substantial in every year from 2005 through 2009.

CODC-e

(Credit: US Department of State)

New CGI

On September 4, 2009, several weeks before the 2009 CGI Annual Meeting in Manhattan, a new Arkansas nonprofit corporation called “Clinton Global Initiative, Inc.” was established. It’s not clear yet from the filings how sums were divided between January 1, 2009 through September 3, 2009; and September 4, 2009 through 31 December 31, 2009. Though a CGI meeting was held in 2009 while the old initiative and the new legal entity both, in theory, existed, an application for federal tax exemption for the new entity was not submitted until August 2010. This application falsely claims that the new entity wasn’t a legal successor to any previous activity, when abundant evidence in the public domain shows otherwise.

CODC-f

(Credit: US State Department)

The New CGI held meetings in 2010, 2011, and 2012. So far, the Shared Services Agreement under which the parent Clinton Foundation operated New CGI hasn’t been made public. So we don’t yet know the financial ramifications of these arrangements. According to documents in the public domain, the Clinton Foundation controlled New CGI. So, in these three years, New CGI provided Annual Reports to the IRS, but its financial results were also consolidated into the Clinton Foundation’s financial and operating reports.

The Clinton Foundation elected, in theory, to merge New CGI back into the Clinton Foundation in 2013. To do so validly under Arkansas and other laws, each charity must be validly organized and operated from inception through the merger date. I don’t believe close analysis supports such a conclusion. Until recently, the Clinton Foundation continued to solicit funds for CGI and to hold various meetings whose charitable purpose is far from clear.”

CODC-g

(Credit: The World Bank Archive)

(Read much more: Haiti Chery, 1/26/2017)

Dady Chery is the Editor of Haiti Chery and the author of We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation. In addition to being an associate professor in the biological sciences, Chery is Haitian-born journalist, playwright, essayist, and poet who writes in English, French, and her native Kreyol. She writes extensively about Haiti and world issues such as climate change. Her many contributions to Haitian news include the first proposal that Haiti’s cholera had been imported into the country by the United Nations, and the first description of Haiti’s mineral wealth.

2010 - 2011: Clintons understate support from firm hired by Russian nuclear company

Margery Kraus, founder and executive chairman, APCO Worldwide (Credit: public domain)

“The Clinton Foundation’s donor disclosure site vastly understated support that the Clinton Global Initiative received from APCO Worldwide, a global communications firm that lobbied on behalf of Russia’s state-owned nuclear company.

The site, created to detect conflicts of interest for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because of her family’s various charitable efforts, shows APCO gave between $25,000 and $50,000 over the last decade.

But according to interviews and internal documents reviewed by The Hill, APCO was much more generous and provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in pro-bono services and in-kind contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) between 2008 and 2016.

For instance, an internal CGI document prepared in fall 2011 lists APCO’s in-kind contribution at $275,000 for that year alone. And APCO’s annual report on its global charitable efforts boasted of a large jump in support for CGI in 2011.

“In 2011, APCO significantly increased its pro-bono support for CGI and, for the first time, our team managed the press around CGI’s America meeting, as well as its global Annual Meeting,” APCO stated in a report submitted to the United Nations Global Compact.

The increase in the contributions came as APCO was paid $3 million in 2010 and 2011 to work for Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company. Rosatom paid APCO to lobby the State Department and other federal agencies on behalf of its Tenex subsidiary, which sought to increase its commercial uranium sales in the United States.

In 2010 and 2011, APCO made more than 50 contacts with federal and congressional figures for Tenex, including at least 10 at the State Department, its foreign agent disclosure reports show.

APCO officials estimate their total cash support for CGI totaled $45,600 and their in-kind support to CGI exceeded $1 million since 2008. They also acknowledged that the firm’s pro-bono work increased significantly in 2011 while it worked for Tenex. But they insisted there was no connection between the professional and pro-bono work because separate units of the firm handled each.” (Read more: The Hill, 11/28/2017)

2010 - 2014: Clinton charities ignore law requiring them to disclose millions from foreign donors

Eric Schneiderman speaks during a news conference to discuss the civil rights lawsuit filed against Harvey Weinstein in New York, U.S., February 12, 2018 (Credit: Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

“New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has the power to force the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative to publicly disclose the names of foreign governments and the millions they donate each year to the charities but he’s not doing it, a Scripps News investigation has found.

Schneiderman’s failure to require compliance with New York law and written instructions from his own office keeps the public in the dark about whether the foreign governments that gave money to the Clinton charities also had special access to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, experts in private foundation law say. New York state has long required more transparency from non-profits operating within its borders than many other regulators.

A Scripps Washington Bureau review of tax returns and regulatory filings found that year after year the Clinton charities have ignored New York law and related instructions. However, the office of Attorney General Schneiderman, a Democrat whom Hillary Clinton named to her campaign’s “leadership council” in New York, did not respond to Scripps’ questions about the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which has never publicly disclosed in New York filings the identity of its foreign government contributors or the amounts they give each year. Scripps also discovered CHAI did not report hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign government donations to the state.

However, Schneiderman’s office said it considers the Clinton Foundation, which is a separate charity, “in step” with state rules.

“He’s not doing his job in that case,” said David Nelson, an attorney and former partner at the accounting firm of Ernst & Young who served on the regulations and legislation committee of the Council On Foundations, the philanthropy industry’s equivalent of the American Bar Association.

In 2009, Secretary Clinton’s first year heading the State Department, the Clinton Foundation disclosed to New York only a lump sum of $122 million in foreign government donations, listing the amount on a required form that directs all charities to “list each government contribution (grant) separately.” The foundation continued to provide the lump sum disclosures for foreign governments in every year that followed.

Nelson said, “The Clinton Foundation cannot say they are in compliance with New York regulations.”

The Internal Revenue Service  has long required charities to disclose on their federal tax returns the total amount of contributions they receive from all governments, foreign and domestic. The federal form does not require a charity to publicly identify its government contributors. However, any charity that wishes to operate or raise funds in New York must also, according to a state law, meet more rigid transparency requirements and publicly disclose “the name of each agency” and “the amount of each contribution” received from any government agency, every year.

A partial review by Scripps of charities registered in New York found inconsistent compliance with the instructions.

The New York Attorney General’s office published a set of detailed instructions for all charities to follow. It directs them to make sure the total amount of government contributions disclosed to the state is equal to what the charities report to the IRS. From 2010-2014, for every year it has filed disclosures with the state, the Clinton Health Access Initiative has ignored this direction.” (Read more: News5Cleveland, 9/06/2016)

Schneiderman will resign on May 7, 2018 amid accusations he was physically violent with four women he was romantically involved with. (Business Insider, 5/07/2018)

2010 or 2011 - Stratfor officials write, "the Clinton Foundation is suspect of being a “shakedown operation”

STRATFOR Logo (Credit: public domain)

“On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.”

Bart Mongoven, vice president for Stratfor’s public policy intelligence group, writes in an email to Rodger Baker, Stratfor’s vice president of geopolitical analysis:

(Read more: WikiLeaks, 10/19/2012)

Clinton appears in a cybersecurity video for State Department personnel.

It will remain publicly unknown until the video is leaked to Fox News in October 2016.

A photo capture of Clinton as she appears in the 2010 cybersecurity video. (Credit: Fox News)

A photo capture of Clinton as she appears in the 2010 cybersecurity video. (Credit: Fox News)

In the video, Clinton says that employees have a “special duty” to recognize the importance of cybersecurity. “The real key to cybersecurity rests with you. Complying with department computing policies and being alert to potential threats will help protect all of us.”

According to a later account by Fox News, “Clinton goes on in the video to underscore the important work the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security and IT department were doing to guard against cyber-attacks. She warns hackers try to ‘exploit’ vulnerabilities and penetrate department systems. She then urges staffers to log onto the internal cybersecurity awareness website or subscribe to their ‘cybersecurity awareness newsletter.’”

Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will later find the video ironic, given Clinton’s own security issues with her private email server. He will say, “Hillary Clinton needs only to look into the mirror to find the biggest cybersecurity risk.”

Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon will say, “This is not new. It has been widely reported that during Clinton’s tenure the State Department issued these kinds of warnings about possible cybersecurity to employees. These warnings were more than appropriate given that it was subsequently confirmed that State’s email was hacked.” (Fox News, 10/22/2016)

January 4, 2010 - A Dept of State FOIA doc release reveals an email from Doug Band to Huma Abedin that suggests pay to play and the Clinton Foundation

(Dept of State/FOIA release, 9/03/2019)

January 12, 2010 - Charles Ortel: How the Clintons likely stole billions from the world's poorest people

(Credit: You Tube)

“Investor and financial crimes researcher Charles Ortel joins me to uncover what he is calling “the “largest unprosecuted charity fraud ever attempted.”

Charles reports that the Clinton Foundation is part of an “international charity fraud” network whose entire cumulative scale approaches and may even exceed $100 billion, measured from 1997 forward.” And the most shocking aspect of the Clinton Foundation’s missing Billions is that much of it was stolen from those who need it most, the world’s poorest of the poor.

Along with the Bush crime family, the Clintons formed The Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund after the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. Charles says, “What the Clintons have done, is they are stealing the people’s physical gold in Haiti, as well as perhaps stealing or diverting massive sums that were sent towards Haiti and refusing to make an accounting for it.”

This is a story of fraud and corruption so vast in scope that it should result in putting the Clintons in prison, not back in the White House.

January 14, 2010: Algeria makes a large donation to the Clinton Foundation in violation of the Foundation’s rules, while Algeria is heavily lobbying Clinton’s State Department

Clinton and Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika meet in Algiers, Algeria, on October 29, 2012. (Credit: US Embassy Algiers)

“Around January 14, 2010, the Algerian government donates $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Algeria has never donated to the foundation before, which means this is a violation of the 2008 “memorandum of understanding” between the foundation and the Obama White House, which prohibited new or increased donations from foreign governments as long as Clinton is the secretary of state.

The donation is direct aid to assist relief efforts just days after a large earthquake in Haiti that killed thousands. It also coincides with a spike in Algeria’s lobbying visits to the State Department. In 2010, Algeria spends $400,000 lobbying US officials on Algeria’s human rights record and US-Algeria relations.

The next year, Clinton’s State Department will approve a 70% increase in military export authorizations to Algeria, despite continued issues with the country’s human rights records. For the first time, the department will authorize the sale of almost 50,000 items classified as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment.” The sale of US military weapons to Algeria is $2.4 billion, triple what it was in the last four years of the previous Bush administration.” (The Washington Post, 2/25/2015), (The International Business Times, 5/26/2015)

January 16, 2010 - Clinton Disaster Fundraising: Predatory Humanitarianism?

“It is Haiti’s good luck and surely the Clintons’ misfortune, that Charles Ortel, one of the world’s finest financial analysts, has got the Clinton Foundation in his sights. Mr. Ortel is a graduate of the Harvard Business School with decades of Wall Street experience. He is currently a private investor. He began to release on his website and from his Twitter account (@charlesortel), in early May 2016, a series of detailed reports that are damning to the Clintons and their various supposed charitable initiatives. The Clintons are powerful, and they have squirmed their way out of many tight spots before, but what makes this particular case worthy of our utmost attention is that Ortel is not only outstanding at what he does, but also fearless and dogged in his pursuit of perceived financial malfeasance. If his analysis of General Electric, which is far more complex than the Clinton charities, successfully pegged GE as being overvalued before its stock plummeted in 2008, then we must hear out his case against the Clinton Foundation. I caught up with him earlier this week, and he graciously agreed to an interview.

Destruction in the city after a 7.2 earthquake devastated the country in Port Au Prince,Sunday, 17th January 2010 (Picture By Mark Pearson)

Dady Chery: Thank you Charles, for granting us this interview. You have been on the warpath against the Clinton Foundation in this presidential election year in the United States. Do you have anything to disclose about your motivations?

Charles Ortel: I am not active in partisan politics. I fit in neither mainstream political party because I am conservative economically, open-minded socially, and passionate in my belief that America is truly an exceptional place, for all of the many faults evident since its founding, starting in 1492.

As a son of a fiercely smart woman, and the parent of another, I do feel that Hillary Clinton has set a deplorable example by her actions and inactions throughout her life, for women and for all persons who seek to prosper and exist in our great country.

My primary interest, now that I have almost completed an in-depth investigation of the Clinton Foundation is to expose what I see as a mammoth fraud and then prod government authorities in most US states and many foreign countries to punish trustees, executives, major donors, and those in position to exercise significant influence without mercy.

The Clinton Foundation is a textbook case in how disaster relief charities should not be allowed to operate internationally, particularly by powerful, educated lawyers who must know better.

(Credit: Thierry Ehrmann)

(…) “DC: According to your website, the Clinton Foundation’s aim and reach have gone far beyond where they were supposed to go. Please give our readers an overview of this organization.

CO: Originally, on 23 December 1997 when their application for federal tax-exemption was filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the Clinton Foundation was to be a library and research facility based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and to raise an endowment to support these purposes.

When the Clinton Foundation was formed, controversies were escalating that served to crimp the Clintons’ abilities to raise funds to defray massive legal bills, in the many millions of dollars.

Right from the start, the record suggests that fundraising appeals supposedly for the Foundation may have been commingled, inappropriately and illegally, with those for a legal expense trust run by former Senator David Pryor, a close Clinton associate.

By January 2001, Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation started becoming involved in numerous “initiatives” far outside the Foundation’s approved tax-exempt purposes that clearly were supposed to be concentrated within the United States from a base inside Arkansas.” (Much more: News Junkie Post, 5/20/2016)  (Clinton Bush Haiti Fund)

A clipping from Peter Schweizer’s documentary, Clinton Cash:

 

January 29, 2010 - Clinton friend, Laura Silsby, is arrested for child trafficking in Haiti

Laura Silsby, left, leaves a courthouse in Port-au-Prince, Monday, May 17, 2010. (Credit: Esteban Felix/The Associated Press)

“In the first week of February, former President Bill Clinton accepted an expanded role as special envoy for Haiti, on behalf of the United Nations, to lead the coordination of international earthquake recovery and reconstruction efforts. One of Clinton’s first tasks in Haiti, however, was to put out the fire of a child abduction scandal involving American citizens.

On January 29, 2010, less than three weeks after the earthquake, Haitian authorities arrested ten U.S. Baptist missionaries for attempting to take 33 children by bus across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documentation. A week later, the missionaries were charged with child kidnapping and criminal association. While the missionaries claimed good intentions and ignorance of Haitian laws, Haitian prosecutors argued that there had been intentional wrong doing. In the course of a month, President Clinton brokered the release of all the missionaries, except for the group leader, Laura Silsby.

Suspicions about Silsby’s intent to smuggle or traffic the children to the Dominican Republic further increased, when on March 19, 2010, Silsby’s legal advisor, Jorge Torres-Puello, an American-Dominican living in the Dominican Republic as a fugitive was arrested and accused of human trafficking. U.S. authorities revealed that Torres-Puello was “linked to a network that trafficked in Haitian and Central American children and [was]wanted in the United States, El Salvador and Costa Rica.” (Read more: Shani R. King/Harvard Human Rights Journal/2012)

“Hillary has a long history of interest in Ms. Silsby. Wikileak emails dating back till at least 2001 have been found in her archives discussing Laura’s NGO. Laura had claimed she planned to build an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, but authorities in the country said she never submitted an application for this purpose. They instead located to Haiti.” (Wikileaks, 2/12/2010), (Wikileaks, 2/17/2010), (Michael Smith News, 11/04/2017)

“Judge Bernard Saint-Vil has dropped kidnapping charges against all 10 American missionaries detained for trying to take children out of the country after the Jan. 12 earthquake. But the only missionary still in jail, Laura Silsby, the group’s leader, still faces a charge of organizing the illegal transportation of 33 children in the chaos after the disaster, the judge said Monday. The charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison. Judge Saint-Vil did not explain his decision.” (New York Times, 4/26/2010)

“The last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake was freed Monday when a judge convicted her but sentenced her to time already served in jail.

Laura Silsby, the organizer of the ill-fated effort to take the children to an orphanage being set up in the neighboring Dominican Republic, returned to her cell briefly to retrieve belongings before quickly heading to the Port-au-Prince airport.” (Read more: Idaho Press-Tribune, 5/17/2010)

 

February 11, 2010 - Laura Silsby’s lawyer and his wife are arrested for sex trafficking minors and women

Jorge Puello (Credit: public domain)

On February 11th, the New York Times reported that Silsby’s original lawyer, Jorge Puello, was suspected of leading an international human trafficking ring involving women and minors. According to the Harvard Human Rights Journal, Puello was ultimately arrested in an investigation being lead by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in connection with the ring. He was wanted in the United States, El Salvador and Costa Rica for his involvement with a network trafficking Central Americans and Haitians.

At the time of his arrest, his wife was already imprisoned in El Salvador and “faced charges of presumed sexual exploitation of minors and women.” Puello was ultimately sentenced to three years in federal prison for “alien smuggling.” Another surprisingly light sentence given the original charges he was sought for. It it not known at this time whether or not Laura Silsby was associated with Puello’s criminal enterprise. (Read more: Disobedient Media, 1/25/2017) 

(…) The head of the Salvadoran border police, Commissioner Jorge Callejas, said in a telephone interview that he was investigating accusations that a man with a Dominican passport that identified him as Jorge Anibal Torres Puello led a human trafficking ring that recruited Dominican women and under-age Nicaraguan girls by offering them jobs and then putting them to work as prostitutes in El Salvador.

Mr. Puello said he did not even have a passport. When Mr. Callejas was shown a photograph taken in Haiti of Mr. Puello, Mr. Callejas said he thought it showed the man he was seeking. He said he would try to arrest Mr. Puello on suspicion of luring women into prostitution and taking explicit photographs of them that were then posted on Internet sites. “It’s him, the same beard and face,” Mr. Callejas said in an interview on Thursday. “It has to be him.”

Judge Saint-Vil also said he thought that the photo of the trafficking suspect in a Salvadoran police file appeared to be the same man he had met in court. He said he intended to begin his own investigation into whether a trafficking suspect had been working with the Americans detained in Haiti.

“I was skeptical of him because he arrived with four bodyguards, and I have never seen that from a lawyer,” the judge said in an interview. “I plan to get to the bottom of this right away.”

The judge said he would request assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to look into Mr. Puello’s background. A spokesman for the department said American officials were playing a supporting role in the investigation surrounding the Americans, providing “investigative support as requested.”

An Interpol arrest warrant has been issued for someone named Jorge Anibal Torres Puello, according to the police and public documents.

There were questions about whether Mr. Puello, the adviser, who said the Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho had hired him to represent the Americans, was licensed to practice law. Records at the College of Lawyers in the Dominican Republic listed no one with his name.

Mr. Puello said he had a law license and was part of a 45-member law firm. But his office in Santo Domingo turned out to be a humble place, which could not possibly fit 45 lawyers. Mr. Puello’s brother Alejandro said that the firm had another office in the central business district, but he declined to provide an address.

Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had been representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation. “I’m president of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,” he said. “I help people in this kind of situation. We’re not going to charge these people a dime.”

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.

One lawyer for the families said that Mr. Puello had told him that he was licensed to practice law in Florida, but the lawyer said he had checked and found no such record. Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had never said he was licensed in Florida.

Mr. Puello said that he had been born in Yonkers, N.Y., and that his mother was Dominican. He said that his full name was Jorge Puello and that he had no other names. But then in a subsequent interview he said his name was Jorge Aaron Bentath Puello. He said he was born in October 1976, and not in October 1977, which the police report indicates is the birth date of the suspect in the Salvadoran case.

The report said the police had found documents connected to the Sephardic Jewish community in a house in San Salvador where the traffickers had held women. (The New York Times, 2/12/2010)