A whiff of scandal

The latest right-wing obsession with the Clintons focuses on a report in the New York Times that typically finds a gun not smoking, but smelling.

Bill and Hillary thrive in this world of the odoriferous but never quite evidentiary.


We newly confront revelations of events that look suspicious. But we also newly confront an old situation entailing a former first couple making a lot of money for itself, raising much more money than that for a foundation that does undeniably good work in the world, and accomplishing all of that while awash in political and governmental implications or complications.

Bill was a two-term president and is a current world statesman. Hillary is a four-year secretary of state and former and current presidential contender. They can't possibly make money privately in a way that will ever appear altogether sterilized from the famous global political animals that they were and are.

The latest Times piece was a typical Times piece--long, detailed, and careful to say it wasn't making allegations but unearthing matters that posed further questions that surely would hound Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.

Not to denigrate the report, but to cut to its core: It seems fair to say the article could have begun, "We have found out national and international things worthy of reporting that have to do with the Clintons' finances and unsettling appearances. We're putting it out there because that's what the nation's great newspaper is supposed to do. But we don't have a scandal locked down. We're not trying to say we do."

Let's try to cut through the complexities. All developments hereafter described occurred between 2009 and 2013.

A Canadian uranium company led by persons who had donated and pledged donations to the Clinton Foundation sold substantial worldwide uranium-mining assets to a company coming to be called Uranium One. That company in turn was sold to the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom. That transaction gave the Russians a major chunk of the world's uranium.

The deal required the approval of a nine-member American intelligence committee chaired by the Treasury secretary and on which the secretary of state--at the time Hillary Clinton--sat. During this process, Bill Clinton gave a speech for a cool $500,000 in Moscow paid by a Russian investment banking firm promoting the deal.

The State Department says the decision on how to vote on the deal never rose to the secretary's level. The department's representative on that nine-member intelligence committee, an assistant secretary of state named Jose Fernandez, says Hillary never intervened.

In retrospect, the deal seems horrible. We no longer seem to cling to any notion that we might be able to trust the Russians if they were welcomed into the international community on deals such as this.

But all that the New York Times has for sure on Bill is that his foundation, which fights AIDs and helps Haiti and runs other successful global charities, got money and pledges from some of these dealmakers, and that he made a speech for an outrageous sum paid by a Moscow investment banking firm with an interest in the deal.

All the Times has on Hillary is that her State Department supplied one of nine votes on an American intelligence committee approving the transaction.

Cashing in is a great American tradition, one to which a term-limited president and his wife are permitted after a life of politics and mere comfort but not wealth.

And cashing in is seldom attractive if you start to break it down.

But mitigating factors are that the Clintons also were raising money for good works through the foundation, and that the cashing in--both for personal wealth and global good works--started years before Barack Obama asked Hillary to be his secretary of state.

So, once again, the Republicans get such a strong whiff of Clinton scandal that they can almost taste it. And, once again, the pasta slips off the fork just as they prepare to bite.

But the whiff alone is valuable politically for exploitation and rhetoric.

And the issue itself is important, speaking of things we may yet confront.

We've never had a president who is a former first lady and whose husband, the former president, heads a worldwide foundation collecting big money from donors, some of whom inevitably will be interested in U.S. government policies and actions.

Presumably the Clinton Foundation would continue and perhaps improve its currently re-imposed ban on some, but not all, contributions from foreign governments. It was in effect when Hillary was secretary of state.

Divorce--maritally, foundationally--might be the best solution for the country. But we can't ask that.

And if these two haven't divorced yet ...

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 04/28/2015

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