Pay to play and Hillary Clinton
The latest bunch of Clinton-era State Department emails released this week provide a host of instances in which donations to the Clinton Foundation netted the donors access to the secretary herself on an expedited basis.
It was a shocking system even by Clinton standards.
The latest group of previously undisclosed emails released by Judicial Watch, which obtained them under a court order, showed that Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, served as a facilitator between the foundation and State.
The documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not among the 55,000 pages turned over to State — yes, likely among those "wedding plans" deleted from her personal server.
Many of the exchanges document how Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band had only to shoot a quick email to Abedin about, say, how much trouble Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain ($32 million donor to the Clinton Global Initiative plus at least $50,000 from the Kingdom to the foundation) was having getting in to see "hrc." Well, would? tomorrow be soon enough?
And then there's the exchange about Slimfast tycoon S. Daniel Abraham (donor of between $5 million and $10 million to the foundation) who just wanted 15 minutes of the secretary's time. No problem, even if her plane had to be kept waiting.
St. Louis political power broker Joyce Aboussie (between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation) wanted to bring by an executive from Peabody Energy. "Working on it," Abedin responded.
The newly released emails also show that the effort to put Rajiv Fernando ($1 million foundation donor) on the sensitive International Security Advisory Board, despite an utter lack of experience, dated back to June 2009. Appointed in 2011 he was later forced to resign.
Bill Clinton's pledge to ban foreign and corporate donations to the foundation should Hillary be elected leaves way too much wiggle room for precisely the kind of access buying that ran rampant during Mrs. Clinton's State Department years. Nothing short of closing up shop will do.