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A porous ethical wall between the Clinton Foundation and the State
Department - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-porous-ethical-wall-between-the-clinton-foundation-and-the-state-department/2016/08/14/f068899e-60b8-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html?utm_term=.3e7088ae001e

A porous ethical wall between the Clinton Foundation and the State
Department

IN ANOTHER election year with an opponent who is not so obviously
unqualified, last week’s revelations
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/emails-renew-questions-about-clinton-foundation-and-state-dept-overlap.html>
about connections between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the
Clinton Foundation would have been bigger news. Though it is an
exaggeration to claim that Ms. Clinton ran her agency as a pay-to-play
operation, the latest unearthed emails from the Clinton State Department
nevertheless reveal that the ethical wall she was supposed to have built
between herself and her family’s organization was not impermeable enough.

Two email conversations revealed by the conservative activist
organization Judicial
Watch
<http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-uncovers-new-batch-hillary-clinton-emails/>
show that staff on both sides of that wall were in contact. Both
conversations involved Douglas J. Band, head of the Clinton Global
Initiative in 2009, when the emails were written, and top Clinton aides. In
the most concerning, Mr. Band pressed Clinton confidantes Huma Abedin and
Cheryl D. Mills to connect Gilbert Chagoury, a major Clinton Foundation
donor, with a senior State Department official. Mr. Chagoury says that no
meeting took place and that he just wanted to pass information about the
political situation in his native Lebanon to the relevant diplomatic
official.

Still, Ms. Abedin responded encouragingly to Mr. Band’s request. Ms.
Clinton was not personally involved, but her top surrogates were. Offering
access, even just for sharing information, is providing a favor. The
Clinton Foundation, though a nonprofit organization, is a piece of the
Clintons’ legacy that they care deeply about and that is essential to their
high-flying lifestyle. It does not matter that Mr. Band may have been
acting as a “personal aide” to former president Bill Clinton rather than as
a Clinton Foundation official, as the campaign now claims. That the
Clintons allowed such distinctions to become blurred is part of the
problem. Ms. Abedin, in fact, worked for
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/newly-released-emails-highlight-clinton-foundations-ties-to-state-department-1470785910>
the Clinton Foundation while she was also working at the State Department.

The behavior depicted in the latest emails does not appear to have
significantly harmed the conduct of U.S. diplomacy, distracted from Ms.
Clinton’s performance or even, given the evidence available, been
particularly frequent. It certainly is not enough to launch a criminal
investigation. As political scandals go, this is middling, at best.

But it suggests that some donors to the Clinton Foundation may have seen
their gifts as means to buy access — and it points to much bigger potential
problems. Should Ms. Clinton win in November, she will bring to the Oval
Office a web of connections and potential conflicts of interest, developed
over decades in private, public and, in the case of her family’s
philanthropic work, quasi-public activities. As secretary, she pledged to
keep her official world and her family’s foundation separate, and she
failed to keep them separate enough. Such sloppiness would not be
acceptable in the White House.
Meet Huma Abedin

Play Video2:32

Huma Abedin has worked her way up from White House intern to Hillary
Clinton's right-hand woman. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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