“Exclusive: Clinton charities will refile tax returns, audit for other errors,” says a Reuters headline today. Errors?
Hillary Clinton’s family’s charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.
The foundation and its list of donors have been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks. Republican critics say the foundation makes Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, vulnerable to undue influence. Her campaign team calls these claims “absurd conspiracy theories.”
Damn those crazy right-wing conspiracy-obsessed nutjobs at the New York Times!
In a Fox News preview of “The Tangled Clinton Web,” a New York Times reporter accused the Clinton Foundation of lying to her about a meeting Bill Clinton had with Kazatomprom officials regarding the sale of uranium to Russia.
“Frank Giustra arranged for officials to go to Bill Clinton’s house in Chappaqua,” reporter Jo Becker said.
“When I first contacted the Clinton Foundation, they denied any such meeting ever took place. And when we told them we have already talked to the head, who not only told us all about the meeting but actually has a picture of him and Bill at the home, that he proudly displays on his office wall, they then acknowledge the meeting had taken place.”
Becker’s scathing report based off of allegations in the book Clinton Cash found that the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars in return for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approving the transaction of American uranium into Russian hands.
And now back to the Reuters article, already in progress:
For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off* from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.
Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation’s work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation’s annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.
And of course, Politico’s Glenn Thrush is eager to provide the dopey pro-Hillary spin:
“Bill’s?” Nice spin, @GlennThrush. This decision was cleared by Hil at State. @BecketAdams @nytimes @ReutersPolitics @washingtonpost
— Fishing With Fredo (@FishingwFredo) April 23, 2015
Badass! Meanwhile, at the New York Post, John Podhoretz spots the return of a golden oldie from the 1990s. Right on cue, “The ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ is back,” courtesy of Team Hillary:
That was the phrase Hillary Clinton herself used to describe the villainous puppet masters behind the Monica Lewinsky scandal back in 1998. And now, her camp has decided to reanimate this ludicrous bogeyman from the days when pets.com was the talk of Wall Street to combat new allegations of Clintonian malfeasance — allegations the substance of which she and we don’t even yet know.
The material dug up by the conservative writer Peter Schweizer for his new book, “Clinton Cash,” is credible enough to have led several news organizations not normally friendly to the right (The New York Times and The Washington Post) to strike deals with Schweizer and his publisher to share and independently substantiate some of its charges.
This a novel arrangement — and the imprimatur of news organizations that liberals like — has clearly frightened the Clintonians in a way past negative books did not.
Naturally, ’90s-era archliberal Vermont governor turned would 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean was happy to play along with the meme on MSNBC, but received pushback from a curious source:
Even Mika Brzezinski appeared unconvinced by Dean’s line of argumentation when he refused to say that the optics of this scandal should have led Bill Clinton to cancel a speech in Moscow for which he was compensated to the tune of half a million dollars. The old slur centering on the notion that a vast conspiracy was afoot to discredit the Clintons no longer has legs. Perhaps that is because the Clintons have done so much in the intervening decades to demonstrate that they don’t need help from a shadowy cabal in order to disgrace themselves. Whatever the reason, the press seems disinclined to help Hillary Clinton cast herself as a victim as more and more allegations involving her improper conduct as secretary of state dominate the headlines.
Exit quote:
This is a genuine test of the Democratic party’s overall health–whether Mrs. Clinton walks into the nomination or not. — John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 23, 2015
And it’s a test of how badly the MSM want to continue posing as Hillary’s palace guard, as well.
* A dramatic fall-off? Um, try again Reuters:
Reuters calls this "a dramatic fall-off from tens of millions of dollars" in earlier years. Try $122M. pic.twitter.com/H051pcg4eU
— Morgen (@morgenr) April 23, 2015
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