Background: Many have pointed out the numerous instances of misinformation in “Clinton Cash.” Pundits and members of the media have concluded the book offers a series of discredited and disproved attacks.
Clinton campaign spokesman: Nobody “has ever produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation.”] [NYT, 4/23/15]
KEY POINTS:
- “Clinton Cash” is a political hatchet job masquerading as a book. It was written by Peter Schweizer, a Republican consultant and activist, whose inaccurate reporting and deep conservative ties have given him a major credibility problem..
- The sale of a uranium company to Russia required at least nine federal officials and agencies. Secretary Clinton was not personally involved.
- There is no evidence that Secretary Clinton’s support of the trade deal was in any way linked to Frank Giustra’s contributions to the Clinton Foundation. In the words of former administration adviser David Axelrod, “that’s nuts!”
- The Clinton Foundation – a charity that has improved the lives of people around the world – is ranked as one of the most transparent charities in the world, yet they are attacked due to it. President Clinton’s speaking proceeds are public and old news.
- The Clinton Foundation is a global philanthropy. As with other charities, it receives donations from around the world because it is working to improve the lives of millions.
| Claim | Reality |
| Book implies a connection between Clinton Foundation work and Hillary’s support of a trade deal. “A chapter obtained by POLITICO zeroes in on the Clintons’ relationship with Giustra — who has pledged over $100 million to the foundation — as it related to his Colombian business interests dating back to 2005. While stopping short of a direct accusation, the chapter, entitled ‘Rainforest Riches,’ implies there was a blurred line between Bill Clinton’s charity work and Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department — ultimately leading to her support of the trade deal.” [Politico, 4/22/15] |
David Axelrod: “That’s nuts!” In a tweet, David Axelrod wrote, “Haven’t read book attacking Clintons. But if, as reported, it charges that Obama Admin moved Colombia FTA to reward CGI donor, that’s nuts!” [4/20/15, 6:48 p.m. EDT] Hillary Clinton was a vocal opponent of the U.S.-Colombia free trade deal even after Giustra donated $131 million to the Clinton Foundation. According to the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, “Giustra gave the Clinton Foundation $131 million—$31 million in 2006, [NOTE: this initially said 2005 but has been corrected] and another $100 million pledged that same year that he made good on over the next three years, up through 2008. Now, 2008, you will recall, was when Hillary Clinton was running for president. It would stand to reason, would it not, that if Clinton was so intent on advancing Giustra’s Colombian business interests, she would have been for the trade deal at the exact moment Giustra finished paying her husband $131 million? But she was against it as a candidate, and implacably so! ‘I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,’ she said on the stump in Pennsylvania that April.” [Tomasky, Daily Beast, 4/22/15]Daily Beast: “If Clinton was so intent on advancing Giustra’s Colombian business interests, she would have been for the trade deal at the exact moment Giustra finished paying her husband.” According to the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, “The man whose business interests the Colombia deal apparently advanced was named Frank Giustra, a Bill friend who has, as we shall see, come up before in the media in this connection. Giustra gave the Clinton Foundation $131 million—$31 million in 2006, [NOTE: this initially said 2005 but has been corrected] and another $100 million pledged that same year that he made good on over the next three years, up through 2008. Now, 2008, you will recall, was when Hillary Clinton was running for president. It would stand to reason, would it not, that if Clinton was so intent on advancing Giustra’s Colombian business interests, she would have been for the trade deal at the exact moment Giustra finished paying her husband $131 million? But she was against it as a candidate, and implacably so!” [Tomasky, Daily Beast, 4/22/15]
Daily Beast: “For Clinton to have known in 2008 that all this would play out to Frank Giustra’s benefit,” she would have to have predicted that Obama would both win the election and appoint her as Secretary of State. According to the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, “‘I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,’ she said on the stump in Pennsylvania that April. That’s not exactly the position of someone shilling for a donor, but I suppose if you’re a committed enough Clintonologist, you can turn it all into a conspiracy—she was just opposing it then to throw the rest of us off the scent, but she’d support it later when it mattered. […] Now, for Clinton to have known in 2008 that all this would play out to Frank Giustra’s benefit, she would have had to have known that Obama was going to beat John McCain and, rather more improbably than that, that Obama was going to appoint her to be his Secretary of State. But those wily Clintons know things like that, see.” [Tomasky, Daily Beast, 4/22/15] Politico: The book “presents little evidence” that Hillary Clinton’s support of the U.S.-Colombia free trade deal “was directly linked to Giustra’s contributions.” “While stopping short of a direct accusation, the chapter, entitled ‘Rainforest Riches,’ implies there was a blurred line between Bill Clinton’s charity work and Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department — ultimately leading to her support of the trade deal. But Schweizer presents little evidence that Clinton’s support of the trade deal was directly linked to Guistra’s contributions or to his close relationship with Bill Clinton.” [Politico, 4/22/15] |
| Hillary Clinton failed to block a Kremlin-controlled nuclear agency from purchasing U.S. uranium mining assets. “One chapter of the book, written by conservative author Peter Schweizer and obtained by TIME, focuses on an obscure deal that had been years in the making. Schweizer says Secretary Clinton failed to block the Russian State Atomic Nuclear Agency (Rosatom), a Kremlin-controlled nuclear agency, from purchasing a controlling stake in an American Uranium mining concern, Uranium One. The company’s chairman, Ian Telfer, was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. Several other Clinton Foundation donors stood to gain from the agreement as well. Because the proposed sale involved the transfer of potentially strategic U.S. assets, the Uranium One transaction was subject to approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency panel that comprises powerful federal agencies. In prior years, Clinton had urged the committee to take a hawkish view of deals involving U.S. strategic assets, and Schweizer says that should have inclined her against the Rosatom purchase.” [TIME, 4/22/15] |
TIME: The book’s “suggestion of outside influence over U.S. decisionmaking” with regards to the purchase of American uranium mines by a Russian-backed company “is based on little evidence.” “The new book, Clinton Cash: the Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, says that Hillary Clinton failed in 2010 to block the purchase of American uranium mines by a Russian-backed company while people with financial and strategic interests in the sale were making millions of dollars of donations to the Clinton Foundation, a philanthropy run by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The suggestion of outside influence over U.S. decisionmaking is based on little evidence — the allegations are presented as questions rather than proof.” [TIME, 4/22/15]TIME: “The deal’s approval was the result of an extensive interagency process that required the assent of at least nine different officials and agencies.” “The deal’s approval was the result of an extensive interagency process that required the assent of at least nine different officials and agencies. A former State Department official who participated in the deal’s approval told TIME that Clinton did not weigh in on the uranium sale one way or the other, and her campaign calls the allegations in the book ‘absurd conspiracy theories.’” [TIME, 4/22/15]TIME: The book “offers no indication of Hillary Clinton’s personal involvement in, or even knowledge of, the deliberations.” “The State Department’s role in approving the deal was part of an extensive bureaucratic process, and the chapter offers no indication of Hillary Clinton’s personal involvement in, or even knowledge of, the deliberations. State has just one vote on the nine-member committee, which also includes the departments of Defense, Treasury and Energy. Disagreements are traditionally handled at the staff level, and if they are not resolved, they are escalated to deputies at the relevant agencies. If the deputies can’t resolve the dispute, the issues can be elevated to the Cabinet Secretary level and, if needed, to the President for a decision. The official chairman of CFIUS is the Treasury Secretary, not the Secretary of State.” [TIME, 4/22/15]TIME: The Russian conglomerate also had to get approval from numerous independent agencies “outside of the State Department’s purview.” “Before purchasing a controlling stake in Uranium One, the Russian conglomerate also had to get approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency outside of the State Department’s purview, as well as Utah’s nuclear regulator. It also received the sign-off of Canada’s foreign investment review agency. The deal itself was the outgrowth of a diplomatic initiative launched by the Administration of George W. Bush to expand trade opportunities between Russia and the U.S., including in the area of nuclear power.” [TIME, 4/22/15]
Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, who served as State’s “principal representative on the committee” that approved the deal: “Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.”“One official involved in the process said Clinton had nothing to do with the decision in the Uranium One case. Jose Hernandez, who as former Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs was the State Department’s principal representative on the committee, rejected the notion that Clinton’s foundation ties had any bearing on the deal. ‘Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter,’ he told TIME.” [TIME, 4/22/15] Lawrence O’Donnell: “Ultimately this decision [to approve the Uranium One deal] is influenced and controlled by the White House.” LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: “But okay, having set the table with all of that, the question ultimately becomes State Department approval of this uranium deal. Was there anything wrong with it? What is very likely this is my guess as I sit here this morning, the State Department headed by anyone would have approved that at that time.” SCARBOROUGH: “How do you know that?” O’DONNELL: “I think. I’m going to place a bet but I’m not going to tell you why we probably won’t ever know the answer to this. But my bet is that there is an advisory chain of email in the State Department that can tell us exactly how this decision was made. And it is probably –” SCARBOROUGH: “The email chain? Are you being sarcastic? We don’t have Hillary Clinton’s emails –” O’DONNELL: “No, I’m not. We’re going to get a lot of it. We will get a lot of that email because obviously there will be an investigation of this. Well we will get a lot of the advisory information that went to the Secretary on this. It is probably a majority in favor, there might be some dissent within that advisory chain. But ultimately this decision is influenced and controlled by the White House.” [MSNBC’s Morning Joe, 4/23/15] |
| Pres. Clinton helped Giustra secure a uranium mining contract in Kazakhstan in exchange for a sizeable donation to the Clinton Foundation. “The two men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra’s private jet to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they dined with the authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton handed the Kazakh president a propaganda coup when he expressed support for Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international elections monitoring group, undercutting American foreign policy and criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, his wife, then a senator. Within days of the visit, Mr. Giustra’s fledgling company, UrAsia Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in three uranium mines controlled by the state-run uranium agency Kazatomprom. […] Still, the company’s story was hardly front-page news in the United States — until early 2008, in the midst of Mrs. Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, when The Times published an article revealing the 2005 trip’s link to Mr. Giustra’s Kazakhstan mining deal. It also reported that several months later, Mr. Giustra had donated $31.3 million to Mr. Clinton’s foundation.” [New York Times, 4/23/15] | The story that originally made this allegation has already been debunked. According to the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, “While I’m at it with the irony quotes, I might as well drape some around that adjective ‘investigative’ too. The Times, it seems, has decided to debase itself by following the breadcrumbs dropped by this former adviser to Sarah Palin because Schweizer devotes a chapter to Giustra and Kazakhstan, which the Times reported on back in 2008, and the Times plans to follow up on that. I remember reading that Times story at the time and going, ‘Wow, that does look bad.’ But then I also remember reading this Forbes (yes, Forbes!) debunking of the Times story, which was headlined ‘Clinton Commits No Foul in Kazakhstan Uranium Deal.’ By the time I finished reading that piece (and please, click through and read it so that you are forearmed for the coming Times hit job), I was marveling to myself: Golly, that Times piece looked so awful at the time. But it turns out they just left out some facts, obscured some others, and without being technically inaccurate, managed to convey or imply that something skuzzy happened where it in fact hadn’t.” [Tomasky, Daily Beast, 4/22/15]Forbes: By the time Clinton arrived in Kazakhstan, Giustra was already “well on the road to finalizing” the contract. “Clinton arrived in Kazakhstan late in the afternoon Sept. 6, 2005, on billionaire Ron Burkle’s plane, four days after Giustra. By then Giustra was well on the road to finalizing a memorandum of understanding to acquire a 30% interest in the Kharassan project for $75 million; the state owned the other 70%.” [Forbes, 1/12/09]Forbes: Giustra had already pledged $5 million to the Clinton Foundation “months prior to the trip.” “The Times makes much of Giustra’s post-trip pledge to the Clinton Foundation of $31 million but failed to mention that Giustra had already pledged in July 2005 an initial $5 million months prior to the trip. As Khan tells it, at the time of the trip ‘all the president knew was that Frank was in the mining business and wanted to become a world-class philanthropist.’” [Forbes, 1/12/09] |
| Hillary Clinton spared Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson from economic sanctions after it paid Pres. Clinton $750,000 to speak at a conference. “In a chapter obtained by Yahoo News, Schweizer marshals circumstantial evidence to suggest that Sweden-based global telecommunications giant Ericsson effectively influenced Hillary to spare it from punishing economic sanctions for doing business with Iran by paying $750,000 to Bill Clinton to speak at a Nov. 12, 2011, telecom conference in Hong Kong.” [Yahoo News,4/22/15] | Yahoo News: Schweizer “marshals circumstantial evidence,” but there is “no smoking gun.” “In a chapter obtained by Yahoo News, Schweizer marshals circumstantial evidence to suggest that Sweden-based global telecommunications giant Ericsson effectively influenced Hillary to spare it from punishing economic sanctions for doing business with Iran by paying $750,000 to Bill Clinton to speak at a Nov. 12, 2011, telecom conference in Hong Kong. There is, however, no smoking gun.” [Yahoo News, 4/22/15] |
| New sanctions were unveiled one week after Pres. Clinton’s speech at Ericsson’s conference — sanctions that left out the telecom sector. “‘Clinton Cash’ notes that Ericsson had come under pressure from the administration and Congress because the cellular communications giant makes technology, like GPS, that the Iranian regime could use to track and monitor opposition. It notes that the Obama administration, after a monthslong review, unveiled sanctions against Iran one week after Bill Clinton’s speech — sanctions that left out the telecom sector.” [Yahoo News, 4/22/15] | The Iran Sanctions were put forth by Obama via Executive Order. “By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and in order to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12957 of March 15, 1995, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, hereby order: Section 1. The Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, and with the President of the Export-Import Bank, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and other agencies and officials as appropriate, is hereby authorized to impose on a person any of the sanctions described in section 2 or 3 of this order.” [Executive Order 13590 — Iran Sanctions, 11/21/11] |
| Company news release was proof of how crucial Clinton’s support of Keystone was to TD Bank. “He links the timing of the State Department’s generally positive report on the Keystone XL Pipeline with a slew of Clinton speeches paid for by TD Bank, a major shareholder in the project. As proof of how crucial Clinton’s support for the pipeline was to the bank, Schweizer quotes a press release that claimed TD Bank would ‘begin selling its $1.6 billion worth of shares in the massive but potentially still-born Keystone XL crude pipeline project’ after Clinton left office.” [ThinkProgress, 4/21/15] | TD Bank: “We’d like to clarify the news release published today isn’t affiliated with TD Bank.” In a tweet, TD Bank wrote, “We’d like to clarify the news release published today isn’t affiliated with TD Bank. For official TD news releases: https://mediaroom.tdbank.com/releases” [6/28/13, 11:37 a.m. EDT]·A bogus June 2013 press release claimed that TD Bank planned to “gradually sell its $1.6 billion stake in Keystone XL.” “An Internet fraudster on Friday issued a bogus news release, purportedly from Toronto-Dominion Bank (TSE:TD), saying the major Canadian bank planned to sell its shares in the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which is owned by TransCanada Corporation (TSE:TRP). Two media organizations, including the International Business Times, published stories based on the bogus news release, which said TD Bank intended to ‘gradually sell its $1.6 billion stake in Keystone XL as a first step toward transitioning away from investment in oil sands extraction entirely.’ Shortly after those two stories were published, TD Bank alerted journalists of the scam and confirmed that it did not issue the statement.” [International Business Times, 6/28/13]New Yorker: “Many interested parties and institutions were weighing in on issues like trade deals and the Keystone pipeline.” According to the New Yorker’s John Cassidy, “It will be one thing if Schweizer has the goods on the Clintons—i.e., detailed evidence supporting his claim that policy decisions were influenced by financial donations and speaking fees. But, despite Rand Paul’s claims, it doesn’t sound as though the book will supply that level of detail. Reportedly, Schweizer relies heavily on timelines, linking the dates of donations to the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees paid to Bill Clinton with actions by the State Department while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. […] The timelines are suggestive, but are they anything more than that? Many interested parties and institutions were weighing in on issues like trade deals and the Keystone pipeline, and former Obama Administration officials have already dismissed any suggestion that the Colombia agreement was altered to reward a Clinton Foundation donor.” [Cassidy, New Yorker, 4/22/15] |
| Hillary Clinton’s brother was granted a rare gold mining permit in Haiti after the State Department sent the country billions of dollars in aid. “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, sat on the board of a self-described mining company that in 2012 received one of only two ‘gold exploitation permits’ from the Haitian government—the first issued in over 50 years. The tiny North Carolina company, VCS Mining, also included on its board Bill Clinton’s co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. The Rodham gold mine revelation is just one of dozens featured in a forthcoming bombshell investigative book by three-time New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer, according to a Thursday statement from publishing giant HarperCollins.” [Breitbart, 3/5/15] | Tony Rodham was added to the company’s advisory board nine months after it acquired the permit.“Rodham joined the board in October 2013, nine months after Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state. Viard said he put Rodham on the board not because of his family connections, but because he worked for a firm, Gulf Coast Funds Management, that had access to investors. Viard said that he and Rodham never discussed the Clintons, and that he never talked to the Clintons about Rodham. A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation said that Bill Clinton does not know Viard, and a spokesman for Hillary Clinton said she also does not know him. In December 2012, VCS won one of the first two gold-mining permits the Haitian government had issued in more than 50 years. […] Viard stressed that Rodham was not involved in the effort to win the permit from the Haitian government, which was granted months before Rodham joined the board.” [Washington Post, 3/20/15] |