Bill Clinton’s foundation cashed in as Sweden lobbied Hillary on sanctions

Bill Clinton’s foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.

The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.

As the money flowed to the foundation from Sweden, Mrs. Clinton’s team in Washington declined to blacklist any Swedish firms despite warnings from career officials at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm that Sweden was growing its economic ties with Iran and potentially undercutting Western efforts to end Tehran’s rogue nuclear program, diplomatic cables show.
“Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran” and believes “more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports,” one such cable from 2009 alerted Mrs. Clinton’s office in Washington.

Mr. Clinton’s Swedish fundraising shell escaped public notice, both because its incorporation papers were filed in Stockholm — some 4,200 miles from America’s shores — and the identities of its donors were lumped by Mr. Clinton’s team into the disclosure reports of his U.S.-based charity, blurring the lines between what were two separate organizations incorporated under two different countries’ laws.

The foundation told The Times through a spokesman that the Swedish entity was set up primarily to collect donations from popular lotteries in that country, that the money went to charitable causes like fighting climate change, AIDS in Africa and cholera in Haiti, and that all of the Swedish donors were accounted for on the rolls publicly released by the U.S. charity.

When Mrs. Clinton became President Obama’s secretary of state in 2009, she vowed to set up a transparent review system that would ensure any of her husband’s fundraising or lucrative speaking activities were reviewed for possible ties to foreign countries doing business with her agency, insisting she wanted to eliminate even the “appearance” of conflicts of interests.

But there is growing evidence that the Clintons did not run certain financial activities involving foreign entities by the State Department, such as the Swedish fundraising arm and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative based in Canada, or disclose on her annual ethics form the existence of a limited liability corporation that Mr. Clinton set up for his personal consulting work.

Where's the indictment?

Clinton Foundation hit with racketeering lawsuit
By Sarah Westwood | May 27, 2015 | 5:00 am



Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have been hit with a racketeering lawsuit in Florida court.

The lawsuit, filed by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, includes a legal request to have the Florida judge seize the private server on which Hillary Clinton and her aides hosted their emails while she served as secretary of state.

Klayman has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons and other prominent politicians.

The racketeering, influenced and corrupt organizations, or RICO, case alleges the former first couple and their family philanthropy traded political favors for donations or generous speaking fees for Bill Clinton while his wife was the nation's chief diplomat.

"Negotiations by email about influencing U.S. foreign policy or U.S. Government actions to benefit donors to ... The Clinton Foundation or sponsors of speaking engagements would not be captured on a U.S. Government email account because her emails would not be with a U.S. Government official," Klayman said in court documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Hillary Clinton deleted 32,000 email messages from her email server that included her communications arranging, negotiating, and agreeing upon speaking engagements by Bill Clinton in return for large speaking fees and donations to The Clinton Foundation," the documents, dated May 20, said.

Klayman pushed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to order a "neutral forensic expert ... to take custody and control of the private email server and reconstruct and preserve the official U.S. Government records relating to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy during Defendant Secretary Clinton's term as Secretary of State."

Hillary Clinton handed over 55,000 printed pages of emails to the State Department in November of last year and reportedly erased the remaining records off her private server.

Critics of Clinton's decision to forgo use of an official email account argue the presidential candidate could have simply withheld any incriminating messages from the batch she gave the State Department.

Her supporters have dubbed the quest for Clinton's State Department emails a partisan "witch hunt."

Klayman pointed to the litany of scandals involving missing records that have followed the Clintons for decades, including the fact that thousands of emails disappeared during Bill Clinton's administration after White House officials threatened internal computer experts who blew the whistle on the "suppression."

"It's a perfect RICO case, it fits completely," Klayman said of the lawsuit. "Our Congress doesn't even have the guts to subpoena her documents. They'd rather get on Fox News. So we felt had to bring that case. Somebody's got to do it."

Klayman said a major reason for his lawsuit involves the fact that Cheryl Mills, then-chief of staff to Hillary Clinton, and the secretary of state herself "lied to the lower court" in by claiming there were no documents related to a pair of Freedom of Information Act requests he filed in 2012 while knowing those records actually did exist on the private server.

One FOIA, filed May 2012, pertained to allegations that Hillary Clinton issued waivers for preferred companies to do business with Iran despite strict congressional sanctions. The other probed a 2012 leak of classified information about Israel and Iran to the New York Times and was filed in June of that year.

Klayman said records on the Clintons' private server are "in imminent danger of being lost" in court documents and urged the court to intervene.

Clinton Foundation officials did not return a request for comment on the case.

The massive charity drew fire after a book by Peter Schweizer entitled Clinton Cash suggested foreign governments and companies with interests before the State Department donated to the foundation with the expectation that Hillary or Bill Clinton would ensure they received preferential treatment from the agency.

thats what we have for now

There are now too many scandals to keep up with. There is so little time to devote to each one, each gets diluted attention.

Maybe that is her plan?

Could be. Maybe this one will deserve investigation. Will the dems stay behind her?

I see some leakage in the tire!

too many scandals to keep up with? is it part of a plan?

ask mr obama, seems to be working pretty damn good for him.

I saw an interview with one of the Clinton "people" who stated that all the scandals were just petty attacks from Republicans and everything Clinton has done, the past Republicans have done or done worse.

"If you tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth."

Bastard Bill and Hitlery talk about struggling to "pay the bills" but made $30MILLION last year for speeches and their taxpayer funded retirement bonuses.....

But they're "just like us"!