Your tax dollars, working for you…
Bill Clinton’s staff used a decades-old federal government program, originally created to keep former presidents out of the poorhouse, to subsidize his family’s foundation and an associated business, and to support his wife’s private email server, a POLITICO investigation has found.
Taxpayer cash was used to buy IT equipment ”” including servers ”” housed at the Clinton Foundation, and also to supplement the pay and benefits of several aides now at the center of the email and cash-for-access scandals dogging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
This investigation, which is based on records obtained from the General Services Administration through the Freedom of Information Act, does not reveal anything illegal. But it does offer fresh evidence of how the Clintons blurred the line between their nonprofit foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and the business dealings of Bill Clinton and the couple’s aides.
This story is interesting in a number of ways. It’s not that it’s a surprise; it’s not. It’s interesting to me because this is Politico, usually very sympathetic to everything Democratic. It’s also interesting because it shows how it’s possible to do something that feels very wrong and yet not be doing anything that’s technically illegal. And lastly, it’s interesting because of how different things used to be in the days when that “decades-old federal government program” was originally set up:
The Act authorizes the GSA to fund the pensions, correspondence, support staff and travel of ex-presidents. It was passed in 1958 to “maintain the dignity” of the presidency by helping former commanders in chief avoid hard times like those that befell Harry S. Truman.
The Clintons have not fallen on hard times, even without this extra money:
The analysis also found that Clinton’s representatives, between 2001, when the Clintons left the White House, and the end of this year, had requested allocations under the Act totaling $16 million. That’s more than any of the other living former presidents ”” Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush ”” requested during that span.
The program supplemented the income of Clinton’s staff, while providing them with coveted federal government benefits, alleviating the need for the Clinton Foundation or other Clinton-linked entities to foot the bill for such benefits.
The Politico article is very long; read the whole thing for the details.
By the way, Trump’s campaign financing and business mix is convoluted enough that I don’t think he’d be much better on this score, despite his supposedly great wealth.
Your closing comment about Trump strikes me as unnecessary and irrelevant. This is about the conduct of the Clintons as public officials, even if not in office, using public funds. More greedily than their peers.
That the Clintons did nothing illegal with obtaining and using the $16 mill is not surprising since they are both legally very astute. Like “Depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Trump has never held public office, obviously. That his or anyone else’s finances are complex and convoluted is irrelevant. He is being audited by the IRS, no? That nice apolitical agency headed by Koskinen the Worm. And it is not the 1st IRS audit he has undergone.
I think you owe Trump an apology for rhetorical excess and false implications.
Frog:
Nope, no apologies.
One of the main purposes of writing about this election is to say what I’m thinking about both candidates, to compare and contrast. There are some things about Trump that are worse and some better, and some about Hillary that are worse and some better, very different things for the most part. But certain things seem similar. And I will point that out. One of the things that struck me about this particular set of facts is that it is exactly what I think Trump would do, based on his history with campaign money and based on his history in general (for example, getting 9/11 money targeted to help small businesses).
Of course Trump has never held public office, nor is he married to an ex-president, so he’s not entitled to these monies. But if he were, I have little doubt he would pull every string he could to maximize them.
You may not know as much about Trump as you think you do.
Frog:
By the way, we don’t actually know if Trump is being audited. Maybe yes, maybe no.
The articles that I’ve seen on this agree that there is a $96,000 allotment each for these past Presidents. They even went so far as to contrast Bush with three staffers at $32k each vs. Clinton with 10 staffers averaging $9,600 each.
Which makes me wonder why we don’t just cut a check for the $96k, deposited to an account of their choice, and be done with it? Let the ex-Presidents spend it how they wish, and save the rest of us the costs arising in the GSA for tracking and tracing and vetting the expenses.
Neo–“…I don’t think he’d be much better on this score,…”. I agree with Frog about the addition, Neo. I think we all know your suppositions about Trump without including them in a factual account regarding the Clintons. The scandolous conduct of the Clintons going back to the beginning is its own hallmark and the reason that I have no problem voting for Trump even though he was not my choice for the ticket by a long-shot. But since we’re surmising, I believe if given the chance, were he to conduct himself in the manner of the Clintons, that the press, public and yes, Republicans too, would call him on every misstep or perceived misstep.
Sharon W:
My comment to you on the subject is very similar to my comment to Frog. And I refer you to Trump’s behavior regarding his taking of 9/11 money as just one of many reasons why I made the comparison at the end of my post.
When I read the Clinton piece and was writing about it, I naturally thought of Trump because Trump is supposed to be the contrast to Clinton. In some ways he is, and and some ways he isn’t. He has shown a propensity for the same behavior as the Clintons here, working his hardest to get the biggest amount of government money he can. Remember, nothing the Clintons did here was illegal. It was simply milking the public cow. Trump does the same thing, and has for a long time. He just doesn’t do it in the same way because until now he hasn’t been a politician, and of course he’s not the spouse of an ex-president.
I call them as I see them. That’s what I see. I’m not going to stop speaking my mind about both candidates, and I’m not going to stop pointing out both the parallels and differences as I see them.
The question of whether the press would call Trump on his missteps is a separate issue. I certainly do think that—as with any Republican—he would be called by the press on his missteps significantly more than Clinton would. I don’t think I’ve ever indicated otherwise.
neo writes,
“It’s also interesting because it shows how it’s possible to do something that feels very wrong and yet not be doing anything that’s technically illegal.”
It calls to mind a saying from someone (or someones) wise:
The scandal often is not what people are doing that’s illegal,
but what people are doing that’s completely legal.
Apparantly, some commenters need their own blogs.
Nice to see some mention of the greed of Bill Clinton. He always calculates his acts to be legal, but just barely. The Clinton Foundation; its Canadian arm, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership; and Bill Clinton’s firm, Tenneo, were all carefully designed to provide a legal flow of funds from influence peddling, promises of connections, and other quid pro quo activities. All legal but hardly ethical, when the principles don’t mind selling out the interests of the U.S. because they see themselves as global citizens.
The difference between Bill and Hill is that he is a charmer, while she is charmless. I have no doubt that if Bill was running, even with all Hillary’s scandals dogging him, he would be polling at 10-15 points ahead of Trump. Does anyone doubt he will figure out a way to profit handsomely from being the “First Man?” All barely legal, of course. And the progressives will pronounce it all as just fine.
Yeah, Trump is greedy. Along with several thousand other competitive, aggressive businessmen. Is greed in business on a par with politicians that use government connections to enrich themselves? Not in my book, but your mileage may vary.
J.J.:
Did anyone here call Trump “greedy” and say that was his failing? I certainly didn’t. I don’t care if he’s greedy, and I don’t care if he does what most businessmen do.
No. What he did was this: he used a government program to squeeze money that he didn’t deserve out of taxpayers, relief money earmarked for small businesses damaged during 9/11. Read the article. That’s not “greed in business.” That is much like what the Clintons did in the situation described in my post: squeezing taxpayer money out of the government to their own benefit (only I think what Trump did was worse, actually). The only difference between Trump and the Clintons is that Trump hasn’t (yet) held office, so he hasn’t done it while in office. He did the equivalent as a private person. In addition, he paid “politicians with government connections to enrich himself.” He himself has admitted it; that’s why he gave the Clintons so much money over the years.
JJ,
My mileage does vary. Same coin tails you lose, heads they win. The 2 can not be separated. It is rather simple to explain. Take a few nanoseconds and I think you will see the obvious. The connection between the politicoes and the gangster ‘capitalists’ is clearly visible.
There are two short lines in your piece that say much about the difference in how we percieve ourselves and what we have become – actually are – like it or not. “…how it’s possible to be doing something that feels feels very wrong and yet not be doing anything that’s technically illegal.” “The law was passed to ‘maintain the dignity’ of the presidency…”
‘Not technically illegal’ is where today’s highly visible, policy making, and successful, trend setting, politicians, bureaucrats, business people, lawyers, theologians, educators, media and other various elite, self proclaimed or otherwise, in American society live today
(Cont’d. posted before finished) And every one of these people knows it. Every. Single. One. Further, admit it or not, Democrats are the master practitioners of this behaviour.
The Clintons are the poster children. Their claim to dignity with respect to anything is laughable. Every single thing they do is openly and consciously exactly the opposite of dignified but, is technically not illegal. This is, at the very least, excused in them and widely admired and emulated in many circles. Our common law society is being undermined right in front of our eyes (though it’s likely that a vast percentage of our society no longer understands what that means or what they are losing.)
The Weekly Standard is almost exclusively pro-Hillary these days.
The Clintons are corrupt so this is no defense of them. But I have concerns about something that no one else seems to be talking about: if Trump wins, what happens to his businesses? What safeguards are in place that will keep Trump from using the federal Government to benefit Trump enterprises? What safeguards are in place to keep him and his family from benefiting in ways that will make the Clinton foundation look like peanuts?
Is he and his family going to put the whole thing in a blind trust? Doubtful.
He’s already rich, but it’s amazing how many elected officials, no matter what they go in with, leave their jobs way richer than they came in.
If Trump were smart, he would pander to the greed and envy of the average Democrat voter and explain how every taxpayer dollar shifted to the Clintons is one less taxpayer dollar that can be redistributed to them.
What do you expect from people who donate used underwear to charity and claim a tax deduction?
However, in this, as in so much else, Obama has shown the Clinton gang to be pikers. They would never have the nerve to spend 800 billion on shovel-ready projects and then laugh in our faces and say there were no shovel-ready projects.
RC Kip–Radio host, Dennis Prager stated long ago that people enter law school “thinking morally” (is this moral?) and exit “thinking legally” (is this legal?). At this juncture, I think a lot of people enter law school already “thinking legally”.
Neo: “No. What he did was this: he used a government program to squeeze money that he didn’t deserve out of taxpayers, relief money earmarked for small businesses damaged during 9/11.”
Yep, it was wrong fro Trump’s company to take the money. Not to excuse what he did but these government giveaway programs are rife with this type of thing. Money is available and those who are passing it out often are aggressive in finding people or businesses to give it to. As an example: I spent a week visiting my brother during his last days in a VA hospital. The hospital had a liaison office that worked with veteran’s families. One of the liaison people chatted me up about my service. When he found out I had been In Vietnam he showed me a program for Vietnam vets who had been in country when Agent Orange was being used. It provided a monthly stipend for the contingency that you would suffer cancer, or liver damage, or brain damage, etc. from having been exposed to Agent Orange. I qualified. The money was there and he encouraged me to apply for the stipend. This program was originally meant for vets who were grunts in the areas where Agent Orange was sprayed. However, the Congress, with their usual generosity, decided to make it available to all vets who were in country for a week or more during the proper time period. The liaison person really pushed me to apply and I had to get firm with him to get him to back off. What I didn’t tell him was that I had worked with Agent Orange for three summers during my college years. I was drenched in the stuff on an almost daily basis (We were doing White Pine Blister Rust control) and 53 years later I had suffered no adverse health affects from the experience. So, I’ve always known the Agent Orange thing was a bit of a scam. Had I not known that, I probably would have signed up for the stipend thinking it was a generous gift from a grateful nation. After all, the money was there and the VA was looking for people who qualified. This happens all the time in our government. Just another reason why it should be much smaller and primarily involved in defense, foreign relations, and regulation of interstate commerce.