WASHINGTON – It’s hard to keep track of all the ethics allegations recently levelled against Hillary Clinton, real or imagined. Republicans accuse her of perjury over her emails. They’ve demanded that a special prosecutor consider corruption charges over her family’s charitable foundation.
She’s fired back – pointing out examples of those critics exaggerating, over-reaching and telling half-truths.
Here’s a summary:
Perjury
What they say: Republican lawmakers have sent a letter asking a federal prosecutor to consider perjury charges. They say she stated falsehoods under oath, while testifying before Congress last fall about her use of emails.
A key example: Clinton denied she mishandled sensitive information. She testified: “There was nothing marked classified in my emails.” In fact, three emails that passed through her homemade email server were marked classified.
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In addition, reports say that Clinton, while being questioned by the FBI, declared that she was advised by her predecessor Colin Powell to use a private email system as secretary of state. Powell says he doesn’t recall mentioning it to her until she was already a year into the job.
Her defenders: U.S. law says perjury requires a wilful intent to conceal. The director of the FBI has alluded to the high threshold for proving perjury. Asked about it during a congressional hearing, James Comey said there’s no proof Clinton ever knew her emails were classified.
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She was forwarded messages that had no classification warning atop them, marked only in the body of the text by the letter – (C) – in parentheses: “There’s not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that she knew she was receiving classified information.” He added: “We do not have a basis for concluding she lied to the FBI.”
Pay-to-play
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What they say: Republicans want a special prosecutor to weigh corruption charges over the Clinton Foundation. They allege donors to the family charity got special attention from the State Department when she ran it. They point to exchanges in emails recovered by the conservative group Judicial Watch.
In the emails, foundation employee Doug Band asks government staff for help – for the crown prince of Bahrain who wants a meeting with Clinton; the international soccer player who needs an expedited U.S. travel visa; the billionaire who wants to speak with the ambassador to Lebanon.
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He frequently emails Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who went on to work for Band’s consulting firm. In addition, after struggling to obtain some of Clinton’s calendar entries, The Associated Press reported this week that more than half the meetings she had as secretary of state with non-government individuals were donors to her family’s foundation: “It’s an extraordinary proportion,” the AP story began.
Her defenders: They’re outraged over the AP story. They describe it as a smear-job – with a cherry-picked headline number, selectively obtained by including only meetings with private citizens and excluding all the ones with public officials. They heaped scorn on the chief example cited by the AP of a donor Clinton met: Muhammad Yunus, who happens to be the Nobel Prize-winning father of microfinance, and whom she’s known for decades.
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As for Prince Salman of Bahrain, they say he never even gave to the foundation; he’d simply announced, during a foundation-hosted event, donations to a scholarship program in his home country. The Lebanon ambassador says he doesn’t recall anyone ever talking to him about the donor, let alone actually speaking to him. As for the soccer player’s visa, the transcript released by Judicial Watch concludes with Abedin saying: “Makes me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask.” Band answers: “Then don’t.”
Misleading the public
What they say: Clinton lied about releasing all her work-related emails. When reports broke last year that she’d set up a parallel email system at home, she said: “I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages.” Yet FBI investigators found almost 15,000 more emails. A judge ordered them turned over to the government. The State Department is now going through them to determine which are work-related, and is planning their public release.
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Her defenders: Not even her defenders argue that she told the complete story from the start. Now she says nobody actually went through all her emails to determine what was work-related. She says her lawyers conducted an electronic search using relevant terms, to help decide which emails to keep. FBI director James Comey has been asked whether she intentionally sought to conceal or destroy records and replied: “I don’t believe she did.”
Conflicts of interest
What they say: That the ongoing existence of the foundation continues to place the Clinton family in a conflict-of-interest. In the midst of a presidential campaign, they say foundation donations can benefit the family. A critic who once derided the foundation as a slush fund calculated that 85 per cent of its budget is spent internally, on things like salaries and travel. One oversight organization, Charity Navigator, has paused rating the foundation because of uncertainty over its financial setup.
Her defenders: The organization has an excellent, “A,” rating from another oversight group, CharityWatch. The reason most funds are spent internally is that, instead of handing out grants like most organizations, this one hires in-house experts and does the work itself.
CharityWatch says 88 per cent of its funds go directly to services. The foundation works on international health, development, climate change and women’s issues. Fuming over criticism of the foundation, former Bill Clinton aide James Carville said this week: “Somebody is going to hell (for this).” However, to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, the Clintons say that, if she’s elected president, they’ll scale back its activities, divest charitable projects to other organizations, and end corporate and foreign donations.
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