Secrets of State, Clinton style

This past Tuesday Judicial Watch released 276 pages of internal State Department documents obtained in one of its FOIA cases agains the State Department. Based on the documents, the Judicial Watch press release states that within two days of the terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate, then Libyan National Congress President Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf asked to participate in a Clinton Global Initiative function and “meet President Clinton.” Judicial Watch notes that the meeting between the Libyan president and Bill Clinton had not previously been disclosed. Judicial Watch also notes that the documents “show that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff coordinated with the Clinton Foundation’s staff to have her thank Clinton Global Initiative project sponsors for their ‘commitments’ during a Foundation speech on September 25, 2009.”

The press release adds context and details in a straightforward fashion without much in the way of editorial comment. It is worth reading in its entirety. At his Washington Post PostPartisan blog, Ed Rogers explicates the text as follows:

Judicial Watch released a batch of documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, that it says reveals blatant coordination between then-Secretary of State Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. Stunningly, the internal State Department emails expose Clinton’s eagerness to “thank [Clinton Foundation] supporters for their commitments.” Of course, these “commitments” must mean money. It’s incredible.

And, Clinton’s State Department was apparently coordinating meetings for Bill Clinton with foreign heads of state. If any other employee at the State Department had arranged such meetings for their spouse and actively thanked contributors to their spouse’s foundation, they would likely go to jail. No lawyer would even let it go to trial, because the sentencing guidelines would guarantee years behind bars. Another way to think about what was going on is to imagine that another country’s foreign minister’s spouse or family ran a foundation that American companies were caught giving to. Those American companies would certainly be vulnerable to prosecution by the Justice Department under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

It’s only because Hillary’s last name is Clinton and because she is the Democratic front-runner for president that she isn’t already being prosecuted for something or another. For anyone else at the State Department, their conviction and sentencing would produce only a matter-of-fact, back-page reference in The Washington Post.

Barack Obama has given us the one-man rule that is the necessary condition of a banana republic. Even before her election as president, Hillary Clinton has added the big-league corruption that is its hallmark.

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