ATL Redline, Justice, Politics

Clinton Foundation's Real Sin Was Helping Black And Brown Foreigners Instead Of Puppies

To believe that the Clinton Foundation represents corruption on the part of Hillary Clinton requires you to believe that wealthy foreigners would not make philanthropic donations to help predominately black and brown people in poor nations.

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Bill Clinton, like a boss. (Photo by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images)

Bill Clinton, like a boss. (Photo by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images)

To believe that the Clinton Foundation represents corruption on the part of Hillary Clinton requires you to believe that wealthy foreigners would not make philanthropic donations to help predominately black and brown people in poor nations. That’s the crux of the charge here. People wouldn’t give money to charity — at least not this particular charity, with its goals of helping brown people not get AIDS and whatnot — without getting something juicy in return.

In case you don’t hear the racist dog whistle in that argument, let’s have Glenn Greenwald take it up a notch:

Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation?

… Hillary Clinton was America’s chief diplomat, and tyrannical regimes such as the Saudis and Qataris jointly donated tens of millions of dollars to an organization run by her family and operated in its name, one whose works has been a prominent feature of her public persona. That extremely valuable opportunity to curry favor with the Clintons, and to secure access to them, continues as she runs for president…

Theoretically, one could say that these regimes — among the most repressive and regressive in the world — are donating because they deeply believe in the charitable work of the Clinton Foundation and want to help those in need. Is there a single person on the planet who actually believes this? Is Clinton loyalty really so strong that people are going to argue with a straight face that the reason the Saudi, Qatari, Kuwaiti and Emirates regimes donated large amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation is because those regimes simply want to help the foundation achieve its magnanimous goals?

Right. We’re supposed to know that the Saudis, or at least their princes, are “bad” people. The Clinton Foundation does “good” deeds (that the Foundation is a positive force in the world isn’t even in dispute). CLEARLY, the only way to get “bad” people to do “good” things is to promise them something illegal, under the table. Hillary Clinton must have made such a promise.

Now, what precisely did they get? Well, the media outlets harping on the Clinton Foundation have found no need to provide any evidence of that. Nobody can point to the thing that our allegedly corrupt former Secretary of State gave these foreign persons who allegedly had no reason to give unless they got a thing. If Hillary Clinton was giving these people illegal benefits, the evidence of it should exist all over the world. There is no such evidence.

But most people learned long ago that when you are slamming Hillary Clinton, actual evidence of corruption is not required. The mere “optics” are enough to go to press with.

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In place of evidence of an actual “thing,” the sin here is “access.” THEY GOT TO TALK TO HILLARY CLINTON (or at least maybe her aides) WHILE SHE WAS SECRETARY OF STATE!! #PayToPlay #CrookedHillary #ClintonCash

Never mind that donations to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s tax returns are a matter of public record — making it an odd vehicle for peddling secret influence. Never mind that giving to a person’s charity is entirely different from giving to a person’s bank account or campaign war chest — which is how most politicians peddle access. Never mind that talking on the phone to donors of your campaign — which, again, isn’t even the kind of palm greasing Clinton is accused of here — is totally legal. Never mind that giving to a person’s favorite charity is actually what people of means and decency beg you to do… “in lieu of flowers,” for instance. Never mind that 25 years of Republican Congressional hearings, conservative interest-group lawsuits, and the “vast right-wing conspiracy” have made Hillary Clinton the most thoroughly vetted candidate for president in American history.

Screw all that, the media has presented you with a story about shady Saudi princes, secret meetings that weren’t actually secret, and a charitable organization that just goes around giving out money and helping people. YOU are supposed to fill in the gaps — not with evidence, but with your own feelings about Hillary Clinton — and come to the inescapable conclusion that she is “corrupt.”

It is an optical illusion. And like a good magician, the right is counting on your mind to fill in what your eyes didn’t see. You’re looking at the head of one person, and the feet of an entirely different person, and determining that Hillary Clinton must have just sawed that poor girl in half.

I can prove it’s an illusion, by disrupting just one of the lenses. Let’s say that if, instead of helping poor people in Africa, the Clinton Foundation helped puppies in America. Let’s say that State Department logs showed that Hillary Clinton was much more likely to return your call if Huma Abedin vouched for you and said that you had adopted a puppy. Would we really be trying to make this into a story about CORRUPTION then?

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HRC: Hello Sir, this is the Secretary.
NEFARIOUS SAUDI PRINCE: Madame Secretary, it is so nice to talk to you. I wanted to ask if you would consider ceasing aid to Israel so I might more easily terrorize it from the sky.
HRC: Can’t do it.
NEFARIOUS SAUDI PRINCE: I adopted a puppy from the Clinton Foundation.
HRC: Thanks! Still can’t help you out with your geopolitical terrorism.
NEFARIOUS SAUDI PRINCE: I may be able to find room in my heart for two puppies.
HRC: Goodbye.

This wouldn’t be a story if we were talking about puppies. This wouldn’t be a story if we were talking about 10 million puppies. Glenn Greenwald would not write: “Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Save Millions Of Puppies?” Nobody would expect that helping puppies would be the linchpin an international pay-to-play scheme, because nobody thinks that a sitting Secretary of State would risk her position and career to do an illegal favor for a person who adopted a puppy.

Why is it so hard to believe that some people would put the lives of black and brown children in other parts of the world on the same moral footing as puppies? Why is it so hard to believe that rich people in Saudi Arabia might value the “optics” of donating to poor children AT LEAST AS MUCH as they might value the optics of adopting a puppy?

Again, there is no even credible allegation that the Clinton Foundation was giving kickbacks to Hillary Clinton personally. What possible upside would Hillary Clinton have to trade State Department favors for charitable donations? Where’s your motive, you conspiracy hacks? She wanted to help poor people so much that she traded the integrity U.S. Department of State to do so? To believe this Clinton Foundation “corruption” angle, you don’t just have to believe that Hillary Clinton is venally corrupt, you also have to believe that she’s a cheap date and incredibly dumb.

But, the right is going to win this one. They pretty much already have. In a rational world, if I told you we could raise millions and millions of dollars to help poor women and children around the world, and all that had to happen would be for John Kerry to return 51 (out of a gabillion) phone calls a day, instead of 50, we’d say “do it.” We’d say “Jesus Christ, how awesome is it that we have public officials willing to return the calls of people who make charitable contributions, instead of only the people who contribute to their campaigns.” It’d be a puff piece. RYAN SEACREST would be on the case.

In a rational world, donating to good works like the Clinton Foundation, or Human Rights Watch, or, yes the Humane Society should make somebody from the State Department return your phone call. We should hire a whole person whose only job was to sit in the State Department and call up foreign philanthropists and say “thanks for trying to help instead of hoarding your money like a dick.” It would be the least we could freaking do.

Instead, in the real world, the “optics” of helping black and brown people are such that we can’t believe it would happen without some kind of underhanded, corrupt deal in place.

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He’s what Jill Stein’s running mate would call an “Uncle Tom,” probably.

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