Replies

The author clearly refuses to recognize the gravity of the very activities she listed.

As I watch Hillary Clinton wish away the fallout of the Clinton Foundation’s unseemly ties with the State Department during her tenure as Secretary of State...

Not "unseemly". Criminal. This is bribery and soliciting bribery. There is no grey area here and she was not "skirting" anything, she was flouting the law openly and shamelessly, secure in the knowledge that her political allies had complete control over every mechanism designed to constitute a check and balance, and would, (and have), lie, cheat, delay, cover up, and stonewall any attempt at law enforcement, and misrepresent, misdirect, and minimize her culpability. This is conspiracy.

The numbers on the alleged pay-to-play are damning: as reported by the Associated Press, of 154 non-official meetings or phone calls on her schedule as Secretary of State, at least 85 of those individuals were private-sector donors who contributed up to $156 million to Clinton Foundation initiatives.

Bad enough, and certainly criminal influence peddling, but there's more.

Perhaps the worst example was when investors who profited from the Clinton State Department’s approval of a deal for Russia’s atomic energy agency’s acquisition of a fifth of America’s uranium mining rights subsequently pumped money into the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons subsequently did not fulfill the Obama administration’s request for public disclosure of foreign donations.

Historians will immediately recognize the former as uncannily reminiscent of the Harding administration (cursed by history as one of the most corrupt ever) and its Teapot Dome scandal, for which a cabinet Secretary - Albert Fall, Secretary of the Interior - was imprisoned. Bribery, influence peddling, and the systematic disappearance of evidence, it has "Hillary" written all over it:

Optics matter when the issue is transparency. How ironic that Clinton defenders were quick to attack the AP’s report as cherry-picking from an insufficient sample when the AP had to sue the State Department for access to the limited records included in their investigation.

The issue isn't transparency, nor is it "optics", it is blatant and highly lucrative criminal activity. Criminal activity - if the author cannot bring herself to say it she loses all credibility herself.