Unlikeable (10 page)

Reading stiffly from a prepared text, she explained that she hadn't followed the rules governing State Department e-mails, because it wasn't
convenient
to carry two phones.

In retrospect, she admitted, she woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Her explanation was laughable.

Even the most tech-challenged senior citizen knew you could have two or more e-mail accounts on one phone.

And anyway, Hillary didn't have to lug her phone around.

Huma did that for her.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

At one point during the press conference, Hillary said that she had deleted half of her e-mails—about thirty thousand of them—because they were “personal” and concerned things like her yoga appointments and preparations for Chelsea's wedding. At another point, she contradicted herself and said that those “personal” e-mails remained on a private server at her home in Chappaqua.

Trust me
, she said,
my lawyers have carefully combed through each of the sixty thousand or so e-mails and sent the work-related ones—about thirty thousand—to the State Department.

But her lawyers never reviewed each e-mail.

According to
Time
magazine,
the legal “review did not involve opening and reading each email; instead, Clinton's lawyers created a list of names and keywords related to her work and searched for those.”

As the
Atlantic
put it:
“The idea that such a process could produce ‘absolute confidence' that all public records were identified is as curious as the notion that Bill Clinton never inhaled.”

By the end of her press conference, Hillary looked guiltier than when she started it. What's more, in the following days and weeks, the public learned even more disquieting news. Hillary
had ordered her aides to wipe her hard drive clean, thereby destroying the thirty thousand so-called “personal” e-mails on her private server.

By any measure, it was a massive political cover-up, second only to the most famous case of evidence tampering on behalf of a high-ranking official of the U.S. government—the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the Nixon tapes.

Hillary's twenty-one-minute press conference was almost universally deemed a failure.

“When Hillary first approached the podium,” wrote Ashe Schow, a staff writer at the
Washington Examiner
, “she was all smiles and held her head high; she looked at ease. ‘Look at all the little people come to see me,' her demeanor seemed to suggest. She rattled off some information about the Clinton Foundation's latest report detailing the problems women face worldwide. She took a shot at Republicans for sending a letter to Iran. She then read from her prepared remarks addressing her ongoing email scandal.

“But as the questions kept coming and moved beyond those that simply allowed her to reiterate her prepared remarks, Clinton became visibly irritated,” Schow continued. “Her answers were shorter and she began talking over reporters. Finally, a woman touched her arm and it was time to end the event.

“If she expected the mainstream media to take her press conference as a signal to end the unflattering story, she was wrong.”

Indeed, John F. Harris, the editor in chief of
Politico
, spoke for most of the mainstream press when he wrote that beneath Hillary's politesse
“was an unmistakable message [to the media] . . . easily distilled into three short words: Go to hell.”

Rem Rieder, editor at large and media columnist for
USA Today
, agreed:
“Clinton put on a clinic on how not to defuse a crisis. . . . But even worse than the substance [of what she said] was the manner. Clinton seemed imperial, rigid, above it all—and too clever by half. As the ordeal dragged on, her body language made clear she'd rather be anywhere else in the world rather than batting down these questions from these wretched reporters. . . .

“Candidates need to undergo this intense scrutiny not for the special interests of news outlets but for the American people. This is a big, important job these candidates are applying for.

“And if Clinton finds this experience unendurable, maybe she should be applying for a different job.”

CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 16

“SKIN IN THE GAME”
“SKIN IN THE GAME”

The president shared his account of the Lewinsky matter with me. . . . He did so unguardedly and freely, under the assumption that we were speaking in complete privacy. What I told the grand jury under oath supports completely what the president has told the American people and is contrary to any charge that the president has done anything wrong.

—Sidney Blumenthal, June 25, 1998

S
everal years ago, I wrote a book called
The Kennedy Curse
, which examined how tragedy haunted one of America's most powerful families.

Hillary Clinton reminded me of the Kennedys in one notable way.

Hubris led members of the Kennedy family to take risks that often ended in calamity and death. In Hillary's case, hubris led to a different kind of self-destruction. When presented with the choice of doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing, she compulsively chose the unethical alternative and ended up mired in scandal and disgrace.

A perfect example of how Hillary constantly chose the unethical alternative was a letter she sent to Representative Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee investigating the deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi. In her letter, Hillary insisted that the only private e-mail address she ever used while secretary of state was
[email protected]
.

That was a lie.

In fact, she had used a second secret e-mail address,
[email protected]
, and didn't tell Gowdy about it.

She had kept this e-mail address secret because it had been used in subterranean exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal, who was acting as her secret back channel on Libya.

There were several problems with this cozy arrangement. At the same time that he was advising Hillary, Blumenthal was on the payrolls of the rabid left-wing website Media Matters and the liberal super PAC American Bridge. What's more, he was being paid $10,000 a month by the Clinton Foundation.

In addition,
Blumenthal worked for two companies seeking contracts in Libya. As the
New York Times
noted: “Blumenthal said that Libya's prime minister was bringing in new economic advisers, and that a businessman, Najib Obeida, was among ‘the most influential of this group.' At the time, Mr. Obeida was a potential business partner of a group of contractors whom Mr. Blumenthal was advising.”

“The
New York Times
story on Sidney Blumenthal perfectly
encapsulates everything wrong with the Clinton operation,” wrote Rich Lowry, the editor of
National Review
. “Blumenthal is banned from the State Department by discerning Obama aides,
so he works for the Clinton Foundation—on nebulous ‘message guidance,' among other things—while whispering in Hillary's ear about Libya, at the same time he's working with business interests hoping to make money in Libya on projects that would have required State Department permits. This is how a charity is supposed to work?”

If you could pan an imaginary iPhone camera across the trajectory of Hillary's long career—from Little Rock to the White House to the Senate to her first race for the White House to the State Department to her second race for the White House—you would detect a clear pattern of behavior: she repeated the same transgressions over and over again. For her, the drive for power, success, and money always overrode standards of honor and decency.

As a result, she stained her record as secretary of state with so many scandals that it was hard to keep them straight.

Here are some of her most egregious offenses.

THE BENGHAZI CONNECTION

Hillary lied when she said that officials “at the assistant secretary level or below” had failed to keep her informed about requests for beefed-up security at the U.S. outpost in Benghazi. In
Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas
, I reported that in the months leading up to the attack on the U.S. mission, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, among others, made Hillary aware that
the mission was highly vulnerable to assault from bands of heavily armed Islamic militiamen roaming the streets of Benghazi.

I also wrote in
Blood Feud
that Hillary knowingly lied when she said that the attack on America's diplomatic compound in Benghazi was in response to an inflammatory video posted on the Internet. Hillary's false statement about the video was proof she was willing to go to any length to prevent Benghazi from becoming a political embarrassment to the White House and the State Department.

Confirmation of what I reported came in May 2015—a year after
Blood Feud
was published—when the State Department released nearly nine hundred pages of Hillary's e-mails.

Among other things, the e-mails proved that Hillary's top aides had in fact warned her about the dangerous security conditions in Benghazi. A year and a half
before
the attack, Huma Abedin sent Hillary an e-mail noting that Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who would lose his life in the attack, was scheduled to meet the Libyan foreign minister to make “a written request for better security at the hotel [in Benghazi] and for better security-related coordination.” And Elizabeth Dibble, the deputy secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, e-mailed Hillary that “State of Embassy Tripoli facility: . . . the facility is not salvageable—the condition is ‘shocking and photos don't do it justice.'”

As for who was behind the attack, Sidney Blumenthal e-mailed Hillary two days after the assault that “sensitive sources” had confirmed that the attack was orchestrated by Ansar al-Sharia, an al Qaeda affiliate.

The nine hundred released e-mails showed that Hillary covered up the role of terrorism in the attack because Barack Obama, seeking a second term as president, didn't want to admit that al Qaeda was still a major threat. When the false narrative about a “spontaneous” protest would no longer wash, Hillary's deputy, Jake Sullivan, assured Hillary that she was off the hook. “Attached is full compilation [of your public statements on Benghazi],” Sullivan e-mailed Hillary. “You never said spontaneous or characterized the motives. In fact you were careful in your first statement to say we were just assessing motive and method.”

Of course, that wasn't true either.

THE ELECTRIC-CAR CONNECTION

While Hillary was secretary of state, her younger brother Tony Rodham received special favors from the U.S. government for a company owned by an old Clinton crony named Terry McAuliffe.

In case you've forgotten, Tony Rodham was the brother who received a “consultant's fee” to arrange an eleventh-hour presidential pardon from President Bill Clinton for a married couple serving time for bank fraud.

As for McAuliffe, he once sat on the board of the Clinton Foundation and liked to describe himself as the “Godzilla” of Democratic fund-raising. McAuliffe was the pal who pledged $1.35 million in cash to secure a mortgage for the Clintons when they left the White House “dead broke.” The Clintons returned the favor. McAuliffe won the governor's race in Virginia in 2014
with considerable help from Bill and Hillary, who campaigned by his side and donated $100,000 to his race.

You didn't get closer to the Clintons than that.

Unless, of course, you were a blood relative like Tony Rodham.

According to a report by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, a top U.S. official gave an “unprecedented” level of special treatment to GreenTech Automotive, where Tony worked as a $72,000-a-year “facilitator” raising money from wealthy investors.

McAuliffe sought Tony Rodham's help in getting special visas from the Department of Homeland Security for foreigners who promised to invest $550,000 or more in his electric car company.

And Hillary's bro was only too happy to oblige.

He used his influence to obtain the visas.

THE HAITI CONNECTION

While his sister was secretary of state, Tony Rodham was appointed to the advisory board of VCS Mining, a U.S.-based company that received a gold-mining contract in Haiti.

It just so happened that Bill Clinton was the UN special envoy to Haiti; he was known on the island nation, only half-jokingly, as
“the governor of Haiti.” As for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she had a decisive say over America's multimillion-dollar relief efforts in that earthquake-ravaged country. In short, the Clintons influenced where the money went in Haiti and who got the bankable jobs.

“The two agencies in the world that can run these [relief operations] are the United States and the United Nations, and the Clintons sit atop this package,” said former senator Tim Wirth, president of the UN Foundation.

And where did Tony Rodham meet the chief executive of VCS Mining, the company that owned the Haitian gold mine?

At a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, natch.

And Tony Rodham's Haitian connection didn't stop there. He was also involved in a failed $22 million deal to build homes in Haiti.

“I deal through the Clinton Foundation,” Tony explained. “That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials. I hound my brother-in-law, because it's his fund that we're going to get our money from.”

THE NIGERIAN CONNECTION

While Hillary was secretary of state, she refused time after time to designate the al Qaeda–linked Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. Hillary's stance on the issue bewildered human-rights groups, since Boko Haram had earned an international reputation for its brutal kidnappings and enslavement of Nigerian schoolgirls, and Hillary had made protecting women and children a central issue of her term as secretary of state.

When Senator David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, looked into the matter, he discovered an intriguing connection between Hillary and a shadowy Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire named
Gilbert Chagoury, who had given millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and was one of its biggest donors.

A one-time adviser to Sani Abacha, Nigeria's late and unlamented dictator, Chagoury owned one of the largest construction conglomerates in Nigeria.
Investor's Business Daily
reported that Chagoury had a financial interest in keeping Boko Haram off the list of worldwide terrorist organizations.

Senator Vitter agreed.

“He's not Boko Haram,” Vitter said of Chagoury, “but he has a clear interest in terms of his commercial developments of not getting this [terrorist] designation, which would put the brakes on a lot of possible development that he wants in Nigeria.”

As long as Hillary was at Foggy Bottom, the murderous Boko Haram stayed off the terror list.

THE CANADIAN CONNECTION

While Hillary was secretary of state, she reviewed a pending free-trade agreement with Colombia. It wasn't the first time she had grappled with this issue. When she ran for president in 2008, Hillary had opposed the trade deal because of Colombia's poor record on workers' rights.

This time, however, the stakes were different. The deal affected a company founded by a rich Canadian mining financier named Frank Giustra, who was Bill Clinton's close buddy and who had donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

According to Peter Schweizer, the author of
Clinton Cash
, Giustra made his private jet available to Bill when the former president traveled to South America to deliver a speech.
In return
for the favor, Bill arranged a meeting between Giustra and Colombian president Alvaro Uribe to help Giustra develop his business in that country.

Not surprisingly, Hillary dropped her hostility to the trade deal and gave it her stamp of approval, allowing Giustra to reap huge profits.

That wasn't the only instance in which Hillary smoothed the skids for Frank Giustra while she was secretary of state. Along with several other rich investors, Giustra wanted to sell a Canadian mining company to Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency. The sale required approval from the State Department and several other agencies of the U.S. government, for if the deal went through, it would give Vladimir Putin control over 20 percent of the uranium production capacity in the United States.

Given Giustra's connection to Bill and the Clinton Foundation, Hillary should have recused herself in the matter. Instead, she voted in favor of letting the sale go through.

“As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation,” the
New York Times
reported in a lengthy front-page story that jumped inside the paper and continued for two full pages.

“Uranium One's chairman [Frank Giustra] used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.5 million,” the story continued. “Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons. . . . And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian
investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.”