2015-2016: The Clinton Foundation accepts donations from the Biden friendly CEFC China Energy Company

“The Clinton Foundation accepted a donation from CEFC China Energy Company, the firm [from] which Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter appears to have leveraged his father’s office to gain equity and kickbacks from.

(…) A New York Times article, “A Chinese Tycoon Sought Power and Influence. Washington Responded.”, outlined how Ye sought influence in D.C., attempting to connect with powerful individuals like those from the Biden family.

The Clintons, however, had no qualms about accepting money from Ye, a Chinese Communist Party member with ties to the People’s Liberation Army. The New York Times noted:

“Mr. Ye also further loosened CEFC’s purse strings, donating as much as $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.”

Clinton Foundation records reveal that CEFC China Energy company donated a sum between $50,001 and $100,000 to the foundation, a sizable amount which came in the third quarter of 2015.

The Wall Street Journal described how, in response to Clinton’s 2016 bid for the presidency, donations to the foundation had skyrocketed:

“Some foreign companies were also among the new donors to the foundation. Attijariwafa Bank, a major bank in Morocco in which the holding company controlled by the Moroccan royal family has owned a stake, gave between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. (The holding company earlier this year indicated it planned to sell its shares in the bank.) CEFC China Energy Company, an energy and financial services firm that is one of the largest private companies in China, gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative.”

(Read more: The National Pulse, 10/22/2020)  (Archive)

January 10, 2016 - A State Dept. whistleblower's letter is ignored by Comey concerning a conspiracy to hide Clinton's mishandling of classified information and its breach of national security

(…) Starting on page 122 of Part 23 in the FBI Vault File concerning the mishandling of classified information by Hillary R. Clinton, a letter to Comey at his FBI headquarters address dated Jan. 10, 2016 begins with the following subject identified:

 

The letter opens directly:

“The purpose of this letter to you as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is to provide evidence which should lead to the conviction of former Secretary of State Hilary [sic] Clinton for lying to a Congressional House Committee investigating the situation surrounding what happened September 11, 2011 [sic]…I watched her lie in her testimony.”

Then it gets into matters long the focus of Senator Chuck Grassley’s interest:

“Additionally, this letter should provide evidence of criminal actions by Hilary [sic] Clinton and her personal and official staff, including some, who were also acting under the pay of other persons and organizations such as the Clinton Foundation and its partners in this crime against United States National Security. This evidence should also be used to convict those senior, major and minor employees of the United States directly involved in knowingly permitting or assisting and attempting to delay and block a Federal investigation of this case.”

Though asked by the whistleblower to confirm receipt of this lengthy letter and supporting documents, Comey and his office apparently did nothing.

An Unscheduled Follow-Up Visit

Comey’s inaction only increased interest on the part of the State Department whistleblower who made a trip to the Washington, D.C. F.B.I field office on Jan. 27, 2016, scant days before pivotal primaries began for Democrats and presidential contenders.

Record of the meeting is contained in Part VI of the FBI Vault File on Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of Classified Information, starting on page 11.

The internal F.B.I. memo says the visitor:

“…explained to writer he had sent evidence of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified documents to the F.B.I. Director earlier in January 2016, but when he called to confirm receipt he could not do so and therefore wanted to make sure the information was received by the right people at the F.B.I., specifically the “task force” working on the Clinton email.scandal.”

Courageously, the visitor:

“…explained he was a long-time government employee and had previously worked for many years at the Department of State. He provided a resume and a U.S. Foreign Service Employee Evaluation Report to prove his bonafides.”

According to the F.B.I. report, the informant:

“…did not go into detail as to what the evidence was as he had provided other types of documents explaining the evidence to the unclassified level he could.”

He offered to be interviewed in a S.C.I.F. so he could talk at a higher classification level to further explain other evidence he had.

All other documents [he] provided …are being attached in a 1-A for further review by the appropriate personnel reviewing this matter.”

So, exactly what did the F.B.I. and Justice Department do thereafter? Presumably, John Durham has followed this trail and briefed Bill Barr.” (Read more: American Thinker/Charles Ortel, 10/06/2020)   (Archive)

March 11, 2016 - Hillary Clinton, The Podesta Group and the Saudi Regime: A Fatal Menage A Trois

If I told you that Democratic Party lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose brother John Podesta chairs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is a registered foreign agent on the Saudi government’s payroll, you’d probably think I was a Trump-thumping, conspiratorial nutcase. But it’s true.

The lobby firm created by both Tony and John Podesta in 1988 receives $140,000 a month from the Saudi government, a government that beheads nonviolent dissidents, uses torture to extract forced confessions, doesn’t allow women to drive, and bombs schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods in neighboring Yemen.

The Podesta Group’s March 2016 filing, required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, shows that Tony Podesta himself oversees the Saudi account. At the same time, Tony Podesta is also a top campaign contributor and bundler for Hillary Clinton. So while one brother runs the campaign, the other brother funds it with earnings that come, in part, from the Saudis.

John and Tony Podesta have been heavyweights in DC insider politics for decades. John Podesta served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, founded the influential DC think tank Center for American Progress (which regularly touts Saudi “reforms”), and was counselor to President Obama. Tony Podesta was dubbed by the New York Times as “one of Washington’s biggest players” whose clients “are going to get a blueprint for how to succeed in official Washington.”

The brothers seem to have no problem mixing their roles into the same pot. Tony Podesta held a Clinton campaign fundraiser at his home featuring gourmet Italian food cooked by himself and his brother, the campaign chairman. The fundraiser, by the way, came just days after Tony Podesta filed his Saudi contract with the Justice Department, a contract that included an initial “project fee” payment of $200,000.

The Saudis hired the Podesta Group in 2015 because it was getting hammered in the press over civilian casualties from its airstrikes in Yemen and its crackdown on political dissidents at home, including sentencing blogger Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam.” Since then, Tony Podesta’s fingerprints have been all over Saudi Arabia’s advocacy efforts in Washington DC. When Saudi Arabia executed the prominent nonviolent Shia dissident Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, causing protests throughout the Shia world and inflaming sectarian divisions, The New York Times noted that the Podesta Group provided the newspaper with a Saudi commentator who defended the execution.

The Podesta-Clinton-Saudi connection should be seen in light of the recent media exposes revealing the taudry pay-to-play nature of the Clinton Foundation. Top on the list of foreign donors to the foundation is Saudi Arabia, which contributed between $10 million and $25 million.

What did the Saudis get for their largesse and access? Wikileaks revealed a 2009 cable by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying: “More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar e-Tayyiba and other terrorist groups.” Instead of sanctioning the Saudis, Clinton did the opposite: She authorized enormous quantities of weapons to be sold to them. On Christmas Eve in 2011, Hillary Clinton and her closest aides celebrated a massive $29.4 billion sale to the Saudis of over 80 F-15 fighter jets, manufactured by Boeing, a company which coincidentally contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In a chain of enthusiastic emails, an aide exclaimed that it was “not a bad Christmas present.” I’m sure the Yemenis at the receiving end of the Saudi bombings would not be so enthusiastic.

The Clintons have said that if Hillary Clinton gets elected, the foundation will stop taking foreign donations. But what about no longer taking campaign contributions from people who are paid by the Saudi government to whitewash its image? The Podesta Group should be blacklisted from contributing to Clinton’s campaign until they drop the monarchy as a client and return their ill-gotten gains. If Hillary Clinton wants to be a meaningful symbol for human rights and women’s empowerment, her campaign must live up to the values she claims to represent, and this would be one step in the right direction. (Huffington Post/Medea Benjamin, 8/31/2016)  (Archive)

April 18, 2016 - The Clinton Foundation, AGT International and possible Russia/China related crimes

“A 2016 DOJ criminal investigation was suppressed and buried by the DOJ/FBI that involved a major NY Democratic power broker, the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation.

The investigation revolved around the illegal sale of controlled US Homeland Security technology to Russia and China in the years before the 2016 election by a company named AGT International.

The DOJ terminated its internal investigation in 2016 despite clear and irrefutable evidence of criminal activity and hid it from the public!

In Part I of our series we discussed the Clinton Foundation and the donations to the Foundation from the COB (Martin L. Edelman) and CEO (Mati Kochavi) of AGT International as well as from Sheikhs in the UAE. These donations in the millions of dollars were for favors from the Clintons, in return the Clintons helped promote AGT International.

In Part II of our series we discussed the illegal actions that AGT International took to generate revenues around the globe. Highly sensitive US defense technology and ITAR regulated products were provided to China, Russia and other countries in the name of sales growth. These actions were beyond criminal, they were treasonous.

(Below is an AGT International internal post about its premier defense software from its company 4D Security Solutions.)

In Part III of our series we discussed the investigation that the FBI/DOJ started into AGT International and the Clinton Foundation but then terminated and covered up before the 2016 Presidential election despite irrefutable crimes!

In Part IV of our series we discussed the activities by individuals associated with AGT International in obtaining entrance to a highly sensitive US Intel facility circumventing the access controls in place that prevent illegal entries to the site.

In Part V of our series we discussed the efforts by AGT International to obtain top secret US Intel for the sole purpose of selling/sharing it with the Russians. AGT International personnel used the information as a means to entice sales from US adversaries. AGT International offered Russians the ability to conduct counter-Intel operations (e.g. cell phone intercepts, object and vehicle tracking, etc.). All of this information provided to the Russians was highly classified and never should have been placed in their hands. This information was provided by AGT International senior managers like Gadi Lenz, a US national who also held a CTO executive position at the US based defense contractor 4D Security Solutions.

The image below shows an AGT International C4I system deployed in Liaoyuan China. The system among other things was designed to automatically track and create a detailed pattern of motion of vehicles belonging to western embassies.

In Part VI of our series we showed the shady efforts AGT International took to obtain contracts in the US and abroad. AGT International utilized its COB (Martin Edelman) and the Clintons to gain access to highly placed Law Enforcement Agents (LEA’s) and former Federal and political figures in in the US and used bribes around the world to initiate contracts.

In Part VII of our series we provided evidence that AGT International hid its employees identities in the US market by using aliases for all its employees at 3i-MIND and other subsidiaries.

AGT International management sent an email to the employees at 3i-MIND and noted that “since the blog will be used in the US as well, we are and we will not be allowed identifying ourselves using our real names.” This poorly written comment provides evidence that the company encouraged its employees to hide their identities in the US.

Today in Part VIII of our series we’ll provide evidence that AGT International assisted a group of Chinese officials to inconspicuously enter the US without properly identifying the real purpose of their visit, which was to obtain highly sensitive and classified US Homeland security information and sensitive operational information.

On June 5, 2012, AGT International announced in its company newsletter that it had just signed an agreement in Guangzhou, China, with a group of Chinese and Singapore individuals to implement its highly classified and sophisticated ‘safe city’ system in the world’s largest metropolitan area.

(Gateway Pundit)

May 15, 2016 - Financial analyst alleges major holes in Clinton Foundation records

(…) “The Clinton Foundation network is actually comprised of several different charities that all perform seemingly similar functions. Those include the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Climate Initiative and several more, all with varying degrees of overlapping finances.

Ortel said the foundations’ complex paper trails are littered with mistakes and repeat filings.

In November, the Clinton Health Access Initiative was forced to refile its tax returns after a review revealed big-ticket foreign donations that had been left off its Form 990 filing.

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has been removed from the website of a prominent nonprofit watchdog, Charity Navigator, because its “atypical business model can not be accurately captured” by methods used to size up traditional charities.

The pattern extends to smaller charities linked to the Clintons, Ortel noted. One organization founded by former President Bill Clinton, the American India Foundation, has problems that stretch around the country.

For example, the American India Foundation’s nonprofit status was revoked in Illinois in 2002, according to state records. This year, the charity was listed as “not in good standing.”

In Massachusetts, the foundation had its nonprofit status revoked in June 2014 and was not reinstated until March 22 of this year.

In March 2015, the charity held a gala in an Atlanta hotel, according to an event promotion.

But the American India Foundation was not then registered to solicit funds in the state of Georgia, correspondences shared with the Washington Examiner suggest. In fact, the only charity in the Clinton orbit that was registered in the Peach State as of October was the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation — even though the Clinton Global Initiative plans to hold its glitzy annual conference in Atlanta next month.

An official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office said the state government did not have an open investigation into potentially unregistered arms of the Clinton Foundation, although emails shared with the Examiner indicate inquiries about the charities were routed to a securities enforcement attorney in November of last year.

Sandra Miniutti of Charity Navigator said the patchwork of nonprofit regulations across different states can sometimes trip up well-meaning charities.

“The current state registration system is complex, bureaucratic and out-of-date with the modern times,” Miniutti said. “It was conceived before the internet and technology made it easily for charities to solicit across state lines.”

Miniutti said nonprofits often tap outside firms to keep up with compliance issues.

“While we don’t condone non-compliance, it is not particularly surprising to hear of an organization accidentally being out of compliance,” she said.

Hal Moroz, a private attorney and former Georgia judge, said he referred some of Ortel’s findings on the violations of the foundation to the state attorney general’s office.

“This is a matter of great public interest because we have a major party presidential candidate who has been greatly enriched by the questionable activities of a foundation that was meant to serve charitable public interests,” Moroz said.

“The records of charities are open to public review and scrutiny, and this is so because there are certain tax advantages to registering under state and federal law as a charity and the citizens of the United States foot the bill for these tax advantages,” he added.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/16/2016)

June 1, 2016 - Haitian American Joseph Mathieu: "The Clintons have destroyed Haiti for decades…they are our number one enemies”

4/7) Must👂👇 Haitian American Joseph Mathieu a member of the Haitian community that had been in the streets protesting against Hillary Clinton in 2016 telling Luke Rudkowski @Lukewearechange who interviews him: “The Clintons have destroyed Haiti for decades…they are our number… pic.twitter.com/RW9LmisZMZ

— ꪻꫝể ꪻꫝể (@TheThe1776) March 11, 2024

June 29, 2016 - The State Department wants to delay the release of emails between Clinton's former aides and the Clinton Foundation until well after the 2016 presidential election.

Conservative group Citizens United has a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking emails that former State Department officials Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Ambassador-at-Large Melanne Verveer, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs exchanged with employees of the Clinton Foundation or Teneo Consulting, a company closely tied to the Clintons. The court has ordered the emails to be released by July 21, 2016.

However, Justice Department lawyers acting on behalf of the State Department ask US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras for an extension until October 2018 – more than two years. The State Department says they thought in March 2016 that there were only 6,000 pages of emails to process. But an error was discovered and they now believe there are more than 14,000 pages. The department also complains they are falling behind responding to FOIA requests and lawsuits in general.

Citizens United president David Bossie says, “This is totally unacceptable; the State Department is using taxpayer dollars to protect their candidate Hillary Clinton. The American people have a right to see these emails before the [November 2016 presidential] election. […] The conflicts of interest that were made possible by the activities of Hillary Clinton’s State Department in tandem with the Clinton Foundation are of significant importance to the public and the law enforcement community.” (Politico, 6/29/2016)

 

July - October, 2016: The Clinton machine floods the FBI with Trump-Russia dirt via State, Congress, Justice, and a top Democratic lawyer.

(…) “Between July and October 2016, Clinton-connected lawyers, emissaries and apologists made more than a half-dozen overtures to U.S. officials, each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents’ hands, according to internal documents and testimonies I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

(…) Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.

“You’d have to ask him why he decided to pick me,” Baker said last year in testimony that has not yet been released publicly. The FBI’s top lawyer turned over a calendar notation to Congress, indicating that he met Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day.

(…) Baker’s detailed account illustrates how a political connection — Sussmann and Baker knew each other — was leveraged to get anti-Trump research to FBI leaders.

“[Sussmann] told me he had cyber experts that had obtained some information that they thought they should get into the hands of the FBI,” Baker testified.

“I referred this to investigators, and I believe they made a record of it,” he testified, adding that he believed he reached out to Peter Strzok, the agent in charge of the Russia case, or William Priestap, the head of FBI counterintelligence.

“Please come get this,” he recalled telling his colleagues. Baker acknowledged it was not the normal way for counterintelligence evidence to enter the FBI.

But when the bureau’s top lawyer makes a request, things happen in the rank-and-file.

The overture was neither the first nor the last instance of Clinton-connected Trump dirt reaching the FBI.

(…) During a trip to Washington later that month, Steele reached out to two political contacts with the credentials to influence the FBI.

Then-senior State Department official Jonathan Winer, who worked for then-Secretary John Kerry, wrote that Steele first approached him in the summer with his Trump research and then met again with him in September. Winer consulted his boss, Assistant Secretary for Eurasia Affairs Victoria Nuland, who said she first learned of Steele’s allegations in late July and urged Winer to send it to the FBI.

(If you need further intrigue, Winer worked from 2008 to 2013 for the lobbying and public relations firm APCO Worldwide, the same firm that was a contractor for both the Clinton Global Initiative and Russia’s main nuclear fuel company that won big decisions from the Obama administration.) (Read much more: The Hill, 1/22/2019)

July 6, 2016 - State and foreign governments are investigating charity fraud at the Clinton Foundation

“Charles Ortel, a successful investor and independent journalist, spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Wednesday about the state and foreign governments investigating charity fraud at the Clinton Foundation, despite FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to charge Hillary Clinton for her handling of top secret emails while she was Secretary of State.

“Many month ago, I thought to myself charity fraud is a state matter. And because this is an international global charity, it’s a foreign matter,” said Ortel, who’s spent more than 15 months researching the Clinton Foundation’s public records, donor disclosure data, federal, and state-level tax filings.

“Let’s go after potential infractions. Let’s see if there’s potential illegal acts at the state level and at the foreign level,” he continued. Because if we go down those avenues, the President [Obama] cannot pardon those crimes. There’s no way that he can do that, neither by executive action or any other means.”

“And I can tell you that many states and many foreign countries are actively looking at this,” Ortel said.”

(…) “In his interview, Ortel told Bannon that “there are massive diversions” and “major discrepancies” between what donors reported that they gave to the Clinton Foundation and what the Clinton Foundation’s public disclosures said they received.

“And they’re easy to track down,” Ortel said. “If I can do it, as a private citizen, imagine what government authorities and state and foreign levels can do.” (Video: Breitbart News, 7/06/2016)

FBI Director James Comey refuses to say whether the Clinton Foundation is being investigated.

In a Congressional hearing, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) asks Comey: “Did you look at the Clinton Foundation?”

Comey replies, “I’m not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of any other investigations.”

Chaffetz then asks, “Was the Clinton Foundation tied into this investigation?”

Comey responds, “Yeah, I’m not going to answer that.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)

It has previously been reported by Fox News in January 2016 that the Clinton Foundation is being investigated by the FBI, but that hasn’t been officially confirmed. An unnamed “FBI source” also told the Daily Mail in April 2016 that the FBI is conducting an investigation of the Clinton Foundation separate from its Clinton email investigation. (The Daily Mail, 7/7/2016)

In October 2016, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post will report that there actually is an FBI investigation and it has been in existence since at least 2015, but it has been hobbled by a lack of support from the Justice Department.

July 9, 2016 - Sailing on the River Denial with Clinton Foundation & Friends

July 22, 2016 - The IRS launches an investigation of the Clinton Foundation

“IRS Commissioner John Koskinen referred congressional charges of corrupt Clinton Foundation “pay-to-play” activities to his tax agency’s exempt operations office for investigation, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

The request to investigate the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation on charges of “public corruption” was made in a July 15 letter by 64 House Republicans to the IRS, FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They charged the foundation is “lawless.”

The initiative is being led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who serves as the vice chairwoman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees FTC. The FTC regulates public charities alongside the IRS.

The lawmakers charged the Clinton Foundation is a “lawless ‘pay-to-play’ enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years and should be investigated.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 07/26/2016)

July 22, 2016 - Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party - A D'Souza documentary

In HILLARY’S AMERICA, bestselling author and influential filmmaker D’Souza reveals the sordid truth about Hillary and the secret history of the Democratic Party. This important and controversial film releases at a critical time leading up to the 2016 Presidential campaign and challenges the state of American politics.

July 28, 2016 - Charles Ortel: The IRS reviews the Clinton Foundation

July 31, 2016 - Opinion: The Clinton Foundation, State and Kremlin Connections

By Peter Schweizer

“Hillary Clinton touts her tenure as secretary of state as a time of hardheaded realism and “commercial diplomacy” that advanced American national and commercial interests. But her handling of a major technology transfer initiative at the heart of Washington’s effort to “reset” relations with Russia raises serious questions about her record. Far from enhancing American national interests, Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in this area may have substantially undermined U.S. national security.

August 23, 2016 - The Wall Street Journal’s James Grimaldi on the Clintons, Gilbert Chagoury and Marc Rich

The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize winning James Grimaldi joined me this morning to discuss the MSM’s inexplicable —to me– refusal to put  spotlight on the Marc Rich-Gilbert Chagoury business relationship and Chagoury’s massive donations to the Clinton Foundation:

Audio of Hugh Hewitt and James Grimaldi:

08-23hhs-grimaldi

Transcript:

HH: I’m joined by the Wall Street Journal’s James Grimaldi, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who has written extensively on the Clinton Foundation over the years. James, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show, great to have you.

JG: Yeah, thanks for inviting me.

HH: How many stories do you think you’ve written on the Clinton Foundation over the last, since she became Secretary of State?

JG: Well, about a dozen, I think I’ve written on the Clinton Foundation in the last couple of years. So…

HH: All right, in those dozen stories, did you ever bring up Gilbert Chagoury?

JG: Yes.

HH: And what was your conclusion about him?

JG: Well, I mean, the interesting thing about the Gilbert Chagoury story is it goes back quite a ways. In fact, the Journal has done stories on Chagoury going back more than, I think, ten or fifteen years. Well, Chagoury was convicted of money laundering in Switzerland. He was involved with difficulties in Nigeria. And he’s very close to the Clinton Foundation. He was a big donor to the Clinton Foundation, and he was given some special access, it appears, because through Douglas Band, who’s a top aide to Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. And when she became Secretary of State in early 2009, he wanted to speak to someone at the State Department, and Doug Band intervened to try to make a phone call happen with a top diplomat. He went through his contacts in Hillary Clinton’s office to make that happen.

HH: Now I have read in some places that he has pledged a billion dollars to the Clinton Global Initiative. Have you confirmed that, James Grimaldi?

JG: Yeah, no I haven’t looked, I haven’t re-looked, I really should say, into Gilbert Chagoury in the last couple of years. In many ways, he’s sort of known, but the numbers are large. I don’t know if it’s a billion dollars, but he’s one of the largest patrons for the Foundation.

HH: Have you written on his relationship with the late Marc Rich?

JG: Yes, in fact, I think I, this, boy, you’re really testing my memory here. So when Marc Rich was pardoned, I covered at the Washington Post and wrote several stories about the Marc Rich pardons. I covered the hearings. I probably wrote a dozen stories about the pardons or more. And because I didn’t know that Chagoury was specifically the topic of this phone call, I didn’t go and reread my stories.

HH: Do you, can you recall generally what the relationship was between Chagoury and Rich, how close it was? I’ve done what I could. I have Googled Chagoury and Rich. I didn’t find any of your stories mentioning them in the same story. Would that surprise you that they weren’t mentioned in the same story?

JG: Yeah, it might. We could go back and we could take a look at what I wrote during the, did this come up during the pardon hearings that were held by Dan Burton that I covered?

HH: No, this, I’m talking only in the context of the Clinton Foundation, because I find the Chagoury-Rich connection, given the revelations of August 10th, to be remarkably salient. Do you?

JG: Well you know, I’m surprised they would not have come up during the Marc Rich pardon case, because I was very impressed with the work of the House Oversight Committee and Dan Burton’s team. I thought the hearings were excellent. I thought they were particularly salient with regard to the Marc Rich pardons and the connections therein. If you had wanted a Chagoury expert, I think the best person to talk to would be right there in Los Angeles, John Imschweiler, who wrote one of the most extensive pieces about Marc Rich that’s appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I think it was a 2,000 word article. And actually, we’ve been in some correspondence recently about Chagoury.

HH: Now on August 10th, out comes the emails that show Band making the request of Abedin for a meeting with Chagoury.

JG: Yes.

HH: I, this gets to my key point, and I have been banging on the MSM that the public needs to know that Chagoury and Rich are tied up together, and Chagoury is making millions, if not up to a billion dollars’ worth of contributions to the Clinton Foundation. And Marc Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton. I think this is sinister. Do you think it’s sinister?

JG: Well, the facts as you state them, I’m not sure if I would use the word sinister, but they’re certainly noteworthy. When I go through the top donors of the Clinton Foundation on their self-disclosed list, which I have exposed as having a lot of flaws, I’m not sure that Chagoury comes up into the billion dollar range, but I’m willing to entertain that. On August 10th, I was enjoying vacation in Ventura County, California, so I did not cover that story, although I did contribute to it while on vacation, but have not gone back to look into it. So are you, do you think there should be, it sounds like you have new information.

HH: No, I have only the emails that have come out last week and yesterday. And thus far, I’ve been able to discover S. Daniel Abraham, a major donor, wanting the meeting, Bono wanting a satellite link-up to the Space Station, Chagoury, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, $32 million dollar donor to the Foundation, wanting a meeting, and Casey Wasserman, $5-10 million dollar donor to the Foundation, wanting a visa for a crook. All of those requests going to Doug Band and then relayed to Huma Abedin. So I have a pattern here that I haven’t seen. Have you written up this pattern of, I mean, it just came out since August 10th. That’s what I’m looking for. I mean, great reporting prior to August 10th, but that’s like saying there was great reporting on Lance Armstrong prior to the DOJ charging him with doping. There’s a before August 10th and an after August 10th, in my mind, set of articles.

JG: Well, you know, well, that’s interesting. I’m surprised you’re not at all interested in the fact that we’ve reported that 60 companies that were lobbying the State Department had given the Clinton Foundation $26 million dollars. I’m surprised you’re not interested in our coverage about these companies that got favors from the State Department, specifically from Hillary Clinton, including General Electric, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft and Boeing, and that gifts to the Clinton Foundation came in or around the time she did specific favors for those companies.

HH: You see, I am interested in that, but smoking guns are what make political stories. We have smoking guns beginning August 10th with the Chagoury emails, and now we find there are 14,900 emails that she did not release that she attempted to delete, and that the State Department is sitting on. So my calculation is of the 750 pages of emails that have been released, we have found five smoking guns of favors asked for of Doug Band by contributors that at least made it to the Clinton inner circle of Abedin and Mills. That’s all since August 10. Prior to that, it’s ugly and it’s messy and it’s stinky, but it’s sort of like Lance Armstrong and doping. Everyone sort of thought something was going on, but until the evidence showed up, he didn’t lose the endorsement deals.

JG: Well…

HH: There’s a new day now.

JG: I think you’re missing a point here, and I think if we go back, let’s go back and look at the Chagoury emails. What was it that Chagoury wanted? Well, from what we can tell from that email, he said he wanted a phone call. We’re not really sure what happened on the phone call. We know what his spokesman who used to work for the Bush administration, who now worked for Gilbert Chagoury, says that phone call was about, which was about the Lebanese elections. That possibly could be right or wrong. I don’t necessarily see that as a smoking gun. I do think that when you have a pattern of as many as a dozen companies that have given either the Clinton Foundation or have given Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton personally for their own personal bank accounts speaking fees, and you can show that those same entities were the recipient of specific favors that came in or around the time that those donations or contributions were made, and you have a pattern of a dozen of those, I mean, you know, there are coincidences in the universe, but you have to say that when that happens more than a dozen times, it could be interesting.

HH: Oh, I agree. I agree with that completely.

JG: And I think…

HH: I’m talking with James Grimaldi…

JG: I think what UBS got from Hillary Clinton was far more significant than Chagoury’s phone call.

HH: No…

JG: And I think that $1.5 million dollars that Bill got in his personal bank account after Mrs. Clinton was involved in helping negotiate down for UBS with the Swiss foreign minister, was a pretty significant story.

HH: It is. James, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you’re writing that. What I’m looking at is the second most controversial thing that Bill Clinton did as president was pardon Marc Rich, the second most. That’s after the Monica…

JG: Which, after the Monica? Okay.

HH: So it is a disgusting thing. He was indicted on 65 cases, including dealing with Iran while Americans were being held hostage, probably will dog him. We thought his political career was over. Chagoury is Marc Rich’s business partner. This is just a question of journalistic approach. Shouldn’t every story that mentions Chagoury and his relationship with Doug Band and the Clinton Foundation mention that he was Marc Rich’s business partner?

JG: I suppose you make a point there. We could, we certainly could make a point about that. Like I said, I was on vacation when the Chagoury email came out. And in that time, I was busy, and since I got back on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week, I wrote a story over the weekend on Friday in which I was able to uncover that the Clinton Foundation was trying to make some changes to their rules. I presented a list of questions to the Clinton Foundation around Noon. They refused to answer. They said they’ll answer when they feel like answering, and then at 5:00, they leak their supposed new changes to their policy to the Associated Press at 5:00.

HH: I know. That was silly. But here’s my key. Here’s my key question, James.

JG: So…

HH: …before we run out of time, is there hasn’t been one story since August 10 in a mainstream media journal, not one, that investigates, expands upon in details, the relationship between Marc Rich and Gilbert Chagoury. Is that a failing of the mainstream media?

JG: Well, I need to know more about the relationship between the two. I need to be able to fact check the facts that you talk about. I will say that there is a bias in the mainstream media that against rewriting stories that have been investigated in some great detail. That may be a failing. I run into that issue all the time. Some of the facts that I talked about today, which I wrote in the last two years in the two dozen stories, are often missed by lots of readers, including intelligent radio show hosts who…

HH: Oh, I didn’t miss them. I read them. They’re just not to the point.

JG: …don’t know about, don’t know about these things.

HH: Oh, no, I do. I’ve read them all. But what your tweets seem to suggest is I didn’t care about them. I did. I think they’re important. But the most important thing, it’s like not spotting Everest when you’re looking at a mountain range. The biggest thing is Rich-Chagoury, and no one’s written about it.

JG: Well, like I said, John Imschweiler wrote a 2,000 word piece not too far in the distant past. It might be worth bringing that story up again.

HH: I’m going to go find it. I don’t think it mentioned Chagoury, at least if it did, the Google algorithm…

JG: It’s a Chagoury piece.

HH: Yeah, the Chagoury piece does not mention Marc Rich to my knowledge. I can’t find one, not one.

JG: Yeah, no, it might. I don’t know. I mean, as I said, John is like one of our experts for Chagoury. This new Chagoury email that you find to be a smoking gun, and I’m not sure that it is, but it’s interesting, and we certainly put it on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. I’m not saying it wasn’t interesting, but I’m not sure it shows a quid pro quo, which is what a smoking gun email would do.

HH: It doesn’t. I’m just saying…It shows Marc Rich’s…

JG: In fact, that’s what we’re looking for, is a quid pro quo email.

HH: It shows Marc Rich’s business partner, James, doing business with the Clintons. I’ve got to go. Come back again, but I hope you’ll turn your very great abilities to Chagoury and Rich, James Grimaldi of the Wall Street Journal.

End of interview.

(Hugh Hewitt, 8/23/2016) (Archive)

Clinton criticizes an Associated Press article about her meetings with Clinton Foundation donors.

On August 24, 2016, the Associated Press published an article that claims more than half of all the private citizens Clinton met with when she was secretary of state had donated to the Clinton Foundation.

In a CNN interview later that same day, Clinton says the article is “a lot of smoke and no fire.” She adds, “This AP report, put it in context. It excludes nearly 2,000 meetings I had with world leaders. That is absurd. These are people I was proud to meet with, who any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with.”

The Associated Press made clear at the start of the article that they were excluding meetings with US and foreign politicians, since those presumably would take place as part of her government duties anyway. (Politico, 8/24/2016)

Clinton’s surrogates in the media also are very critical of the article. For instance, a Politico article about it later on the same day is entitled “Clinton camp rages against AP report.” The article notes that Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, long-time Clinton ally James Carville, Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon, and Clinton Foundation President Donna Shalala all make the same point in media interviews, that the Associated Press is “cherry-picking” by limiting its analysis to only private citizens who met with Clinton. They also assert that no wrongdoing on Clinton’s part was proven by the article. (Politico, 8/24/2016)

The FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation tries but fails to get access to possibly relevant emails found in the Clinton email investigation.

Although the FBI’s Clinton email investigation was closed in July 2016, the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation continues, though it never has had grand jury backing and thus no subpoena power.

The email investigation uncovered many thousands of emails on non-government computers belonging to Clinton and some of her aides, and many of these same people had obvious roles with the Clinton Foundation. As a result, sometime in September 2016, Clinton Foundation investigators ask to have access to the emails found in the Clinton email investigation.

But that request is rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information. Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter.”

However, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe allegedly tells them no and says they can’t “go prosecutor shopping.”

In early October 2016, a different FBI investigation will find emails belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin on a previously unknown computer, leading to a different legal issue about sharing information between various FBI investigations.

It appears the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation still has not been given access to the possibly relevant emails found by the Clinton email investigation. (The Wall Street Journal, 10/30/2016)

September 3, 2016 - Kent email to Yovanovitch: Newly appointed and Biden approved Ukraine prosecutor is offered ‘high-level’ access to Clinton campaign

“We received 38 pages of records from the State Department revealing that Ukraine Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko was offered “high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings.

This came to light in an email from George Kent, then-U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission to Ukraine and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The email was to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The offer was made by Karen Tramontano, who was an assistant to President Clinton and deputy White House Chief of Staff. She is the CEO of Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm that was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations.

In the same 2016 email, Kent stated that he responded to Lutsenko by recommending that he not take the offer due to corruption concerns with Burisma and the Clinton Foundation.

(…) The records include a September 3, 2016, email from Kent to Yovanovitch and other colleagues which details that Lutsenko informed him that he was pitched high-level access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by Blue Star Strategies. The email’s subject line is “Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with Blue Star, other Ukr issue comments.” The email says:

[Lutsenko] confirmed he had been pitched by Blue Star, not sought them out. He said he honestly didn’t know how Blue Star was to get paid – he didn’t have funds – and that some BPP MP [Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party member of Parliament] that we probably didn’t know “and that’s good” ([redacted]??) had introduced them to him. Blue Star CEO Tramontano’s pitch was that she could gain him access to high levels of the Clinton campaign (GPK note: she was Podesta’s deputy as deputy COS the last year of Bill Clinton’s tenure), and that was appealing – to meet the possible next Presidential Chief of Staff.

Later in the same email, Kent added that he suggested that Lutsenko not take that offer because Blue Star represented Burisma. Kent also mentioned corruption concerns related to the Clinton Foundation and Podesta:

In connection to Blue Star, I noted their representation of Burisma/Zlochevsky, mentioned the various money flows from Ukraine to lobbyists that had been prominently int he news this past month, whether Manafort/Klueyev via Brussels to Podesta Group and Weber/Mercury, Yanu’s Justice Minister Lavrynovych to Skaden/arps-and Greg Craig – and Pinchuk to Clinton Foundation, and the media attention being paid at present to the Kyiv/Washington gravy train….

…and he got the drift. Not ideal timing, little receptive audience, and wrong facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when there would be more traction/better audience.

This email is inconsistent with Yovanovitch’s October 2019 testimony under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in the Trump impeachment inquiry that she knew very little about Burisma Holdings and the long-running corruption investigation against it stating, “it just wasn’t a big issue.”

This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying operation to an influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. This further confirms the Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of President Trump was to cover-up and distract from their own corruption. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 12/17/2020)  (Archive)

September 6, 2016: False Philanthropy - Summary Review of Selected Intentionally False Representations in Clinton Foundation Public Filings

Concentrating on Clinton Foundation Facts

The attached Executive Summary continues an investigation into the Clinton Foundation public record begun, by chance, in February 2015.

Since then, questions have started to swirl around the various entities that comprise what I call the Clinton Charity Network: a group of entities supported by a variety of donors from inside the United States and around the world.

Beginning today, and regularly thereafter, numerous detailed Exhibits will examine the known public record of the Clinton Charity Network within the context of applicable state, federal, and foreign laws.

The next Exhibit, Exhibit 1, is scheduled to follow the Executive Summary late on 7 September 2016.

(Read more: Charles Ortel, Executive Summary, 9/06/2016)