Did Hillary let friends use State Department gigs as a piggy bank?
By: streiff ( Diary) | March 12th, 2015 at 03:00 PM | 24
Hillary Clinton had good reason for operating on a private email server. She had an even better reason for deleting some 30,000 email that she and her paid staffers deemed to be “personal.” The reason is that Clinton and a coterie of favored fluffers appear to have used their time at the State Department as a piggy bank; a position from which they could draw a federal salary and extract information and turn it into cash.
[ And when they weren't on the government payroll, they were on the staff of the Clinton's family foundation paid for by all those multi-million dollar contributions from foreign goverments. ]
Nearly two years ago, the New York Times reported on the unusual arrangement whereby Huma Abedin, Hillary’s ::cough deputy chief of staff ::wink-wink was allowed not only to be an employee of the State Department but she was also allowed to be an employee of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton foundation and a consultant to Teneo, ” a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.”
It is not clear what role Mrs. Clinton played in approving the arrangement. Some good-government groups have been critical of such situations, saying public employees’ loyalty should be solely to the public and their government work, rather than private firms and figures.
Ms. Abedin reached her new working arrangement in June 2012, when she returned from maternity leave, quietly leaving her position as deputy chief of staff and becoming a special government employee, which is essentially a consultant. A State Department official said that change freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings for the rest of the year on her financial disclosure forms. Still, during that period, she continued to be identified publicly in news reports as Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.
Officials in the State Department and Clinton circles seem especially sensitive about the arrangement, and no one would speak about it on the record. Earlier this month, Mr. Weiner released a copy of the couple’s 2012 tax return showing that they had income of more than $490,000.
Abedin was not alone. Earlier this year, the Washington Post expanded upon what we know:
Questions about Clinton’s use of the special program were first raised in 2013, when it became public that Abedin was being paid by the State Department while also working for an international consulting firm with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, several news organizations, including The Washington Post, have since learned the extent to which Hillary Clinton used the program.
Others granted the special status included a former campaign manager, a longtime legal and personal adviser, a former House member now affiliated with a group backing a Clinton presidential bid, a former pollster and others who have supported the Clintons in their political and philanthropic organizations.
In interviews, State Department officials and several of the individuals said the special government status was legitimate and had no relationship to Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. Some said they declined compensation for their work under the special status.
Aside from Abedin, Clinton political allies who were granted the special status included Maggie Williams, Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager; Jeremy Rosner, a former Clinton pollster; Jonathan Prince, a speechwriter for Bill and Hillary Clinton; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former Maryland lieutenant governor who is on the board of American Bridge, a left-leaning political operation that has defended Hillary Clinton against partisan attacks; and Cheryl Mills, a former White House deputy counsel and longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton.
Essentially, Hillary was using employment at State as a way of employing Clinton loyalists, while at the same time they were on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation and allowed access to information that would be valuable to paying clients. Their employment category allowed them evade income disclosures which could have exposed conflicts of interest.
None of this should be surprising. Bill Clinton’s weakness is rather prosaic and banal. He likes sex. He’s very egalitarian about it. In fact, he’s a sexual omnivore. If the object is vaguely female, he’ll hump it. If Bruce Jenner is ever in the area, keep your eye on Bill. Hillary, on the other hand, is about avarice and secrecy. When you take a look at the scandals she was involved in, cattle futures, Whitewater, etc., the driving force was greed. When she looted the White House of furniture as they moved out in 2001? Greed. The unprecedented rate as which the Clinton Foundation vacuumed cash from nations wishing a favor from the United States while Hillary was Secretary of State? Greed. Her moronic brothers using her name to run fly by night business ventures in Paraguay and Georgia (for you MMfA analysts, this is the country not the state. Yes, there is a country called Georgia, look it up.) shows it is some sort of Freudean or genetic trait in her family.
Obviously, Clinton lied through her teeth in her press conference. Even a New York Times reporter can’t believe that the Secretary of State did not send classified information via email a single time in her shameful four-year stint in Foggy Bottom. But even if classified information is festooning her private server, there is no way an Obama Justice Department will do anything about it. They don’t care about crime. They care about punishing enemies. The real vulnerability lies with those “special employees” who were able to use the State Department and the information to which they had access to earn big money. Most were employees of the Clinton Foundation as well. Their emails will be on that server, too. And they don’t have a Get Out Of Jail Free card.
http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/12/hillary-let-friends-use-state-department-gigs-piggy-bank/ |
