I am sure it was simply an oversight, you know like when many of those who got one of the bountiful State Dept. contracts to help rebuild Haiti also “just happened to” give large donations to the Clinton Foundation.
On Friday Reuters reported the Clinton Foundation “confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.” I am sure she meant to report it. Perhaps the check came when Hillary was writing one of those personal emails about yoga or her daughter’s wedding and it slipped her mind.
Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta’s account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.
Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family’s globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.
If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to “increase materially” its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department’s ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.
When the error was first revealed by the WikiLeaks release, the Clinton Foundation didn’t want to confirm the Qatar donation.
Finally this week foundation spokesman Brian Cookstra, said “they accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a “material increase” in the Gulf country’s support for the charity.” Wow think of that one million buckaroos and not a material increase. They must be really beholden to the government of Qatar.
No Qatar officials wanted to discuss the gift. I wonder if the million dollars came from the same account Qatar uses to pay Hamas and other terrorist organizations?
The State Department has said it has no record of the foundation submitting the Qatar gift for review, and that it was incumbent on the foundation to notify the department about donations that needed attention. A department spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions about the donation.
Asked whether Qatar was funding a specific program at the foundation, Cookstra said the country supported the organization’s “overall humanitarian work.”
“Qatar continued supporting Clinton Foundation at equal or lower levels” compared with the country’s pre-2009 support, he said. He declined to say if Qatar gave any money during the first three years of Clinton’s four-year term at the State Department, or what its support before 2009 amounted to.
In another email released by WikiLeaks, a former Clinton Foundation fundraiser said he raised more than $21 million in connection with Bill Clinton’s 65th birthday in 2011.
Spokesmen for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Bill Clinton did not respond to emailed questions about the donation.
See it had to be an oversight…come on why should she remember one million dollars from the terrorist sponsors in Qatar. Besides they were just trying to celebrate Bubba’s birthday. I am sure the terrorist sponsors in Qatar considered it a Mitzvah (or whatever the Arabic equivalent is)
And as for Hillary she was busily preparing for Bubba’s 65th party. See it must have been an oversight, besides the Clinton mantra is rules are for the little people.