The Clinton cash nexus

Is there anyone in Clintonworld who is out defending the massive corruption revealed in the latest tranche of WikiLeaks/Podesta emails? Last night the Democratic flack Bill Burton appeared on The Kelly File to take up the question from a Clintonian perspective. I would love to include a video or transcript here but cannot find one. Writing from memory, Burton’s response was: RUSSIA, followed by Clinton’s going to win, followed by Trump is going to lose, all festooned with healthy dollops of smugness and complacency. What struck me most was the lack of any trace of disgust, either with himself or his heroes.

Kelly summarized Burton’s spiel on Twitter: “Trump is running out of paths to 270 electoral votes & this does not create a new one for him.” Well, okay. Let us face the awful truth of Bill Clinton and the missus.

Peter Schweizer got the ball rolling with Clinton Cash. All the rest, you might say, is commentary. This is one book on current affairs that will stand the test of time.

The latest WikiLeaks dump adds the commentary courtesy of Clinton crony Doug Band and his memo setting forth the cash nexus among Bill Clinton, the missus (in her various capacities), The Clinton Foundation, and Band’s Teneo. Rosaline Helderman and Tom Hamburger took a look at the cash nexus in the Washington Post article “Inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.'” (including a link to the PDF of the 11-page Band memo itemizing his monetization of the Clintons, posted here.) Paul Mirengoff adds a citation to Chuck Ross’s Daily caller article.

In his memo, Band details how he set up for-profit deals for Bill Clinton, deals involving money and “as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.” Band’s memo covers 2001 to 2011, during which time “President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $30 million for him personally with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years, should he choose to continue with the current engagements.”

ZeroHedge has an excellent recap including the Big Dog’s “for profit” activities at ZeroHedge The New York Post editorial follows up with the editorial “Bill and Hillary’s sleazy road to riches.” And now comes the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel to dub the happy couple “Grifters in chief” (accessible via Google here). Strassel’s column delivers the bottom line, so to speak.

In ages past, normal Americans would have been sickened by the greed, the cynicism, the abuse of high office and the betrayal of public trust implicit in the latest revelations. To put it in Ciceronian terms, times and mores have changed. And I suppose I should add that the corruption of the Clintons is not their least attractive feature, but it is gross.

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