Follow the Money

Great nations fade into history for many reasons—overconfidence in their ability to shape the world, disregard for their citizens', problems and needs, overspending on things that are unimportant and underspending on things that are, a refusal to name and face their true enemies, hoping against hope that the enemies won't notice, and of course, incompetent and corrupt leaders who cause the populace to lose faith in governance.

It may be that corruption is the most potent of all factors that lead to a nation's demise. After all, once a government is corrupt, nothing works as it should, no one with any intelligence trusts a nation's leaders to tell the truth, a select elite becomes rich while the common people suffer rules that are designed to keep them in their place, and worse, those who follow the rules feel like suckers.

All government, even good ones, have a modicum of corruption. In the United States, corruption has been a low level hum historically, not the roar of a freight train. That's beginning to change.

Under Barack Obama and the Democrats, government corruption has increased dramatically. There is irrefutable evidence that IRS was weaponized against citizens who disagreed politically with a Democratic administration. The EPA has been used to punish certain businesses using regulatory dictates that courts have found to be illegal and set up rules that will reward other businesses favored by the current leadership. The administration has lied blatantly to the public in order to get legislation passed. Scandals like Benghazi, the VA, AP, Fast and Furious have been stonewalled and ignored by a hyper-politicized Justice Department. And a complicit media has worked to protect those in power. The low hum of corruption has grown in volume.

Now, the majority of Democrats propose that we elect Hillary Clinton.

Kim Strassel reports the latest developments:

The Clintons are street fighters, and over their scandal-plagued years they have mastered outwitting the press, Congress, the Justice Department, even special prosecutors. But the reason Mrs. Clinton isn’t winning her latest scandal is because she faces a new opponent—one she can’t beat: the Freedom of Information Act.

Of all the Clinton email revelations this week, none compared with a filing by the State Department in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court in Washington on Monday. The filing was a response to a FOIA lawsuit brought in March by conservative organization Citizens United. The group demanded documents from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state related to the Clinton Foundation and to the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. What the State Department revealed was a testament to the power of FOIA ...

We find that the State Department has—but is not releasing—an email chain between then-Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and a Clinton Foundation board member about the secretary of state’s planned trip to Africa. We find that the State Department has—but is not releasing—emails between Ms. Mills and foundation staff discussing “invitations to foreign business executives to attend the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.” We find many undisclosed email chains in which State Department officials talk with Clinton Foundation officials about Bill Clinton speeches and Bill Clinton travel, including to events in North Korea and Congo.

Huma Abedin, a longtime confidante of Mrs. Clinton’s, was somehow allowed to work, simultaneously, at the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and as a consultant to Teneo—a consulting firm run by Clinton loyalist Doug Band. All three of Ms. Abedin’s hats come into play in an undisclosed email exchange regarding a 2012 dinner in Ireland. As the Washington Examiner reported in May, Mrs. Clinton received an award at the dinner from a Clinton Foundation donor. The ceremony was promoted by Teneo. Mrs. Clinton attended in her official capacity as secretary of state. Sort through that.

We already know that the Clinton Foundation continued to take foreign money even while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. We now know this was only the start of the entwining. These email summaries show that the Clinton Foundation was the State Department and the State Department was the Clinton Foundation. All one, big, seamless, Clinton-promoting entity. We would know far more if State released the full emails. It is citing personal privacy as one reason not to make some public. In others, it claims the emails “shed no light on the conduct of U.S. Government business.”

The hum increases in volume yet again. It's now a loud, grating buzz, sort of like the sound of a disfunctional bass speaker in a audio system—loud, persistent, and difficult to ignore—unless you're a Democrat.

The true problem with Hillary Clinton is that she is corrupt—to the core. Her machinations at the Department of State stink of self-serving dealing with elites that could enrich her family through the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State. It's not about top secret emails (although that, in of of itself, is a violation of the law), it's not about private servers (although that, in and of itself, indicated a strategy to hide her dealings from public view). It is about the money—follow the money.

Yet, we continue to see democratic leaders and their trained hamsters in the media suggest that this is a "witch hunt" or that it's nothing more than "partisan politics." We'll see them leap to Hillary's defense in upcoming Congressional hearings and work double time to help her stonewall, obfuscate, and deny any wrong doing.

The next step should be a forensic accounting of Clinton Foundation cash. Being tax exempt, you'd think that the IRS might have some interest in investigating all of this. That would be Obama's IRS, right? And that's my point. Once a government agency is corrupted, they cannot be trusted to enforce the law in a balanced manner. So the Clinton Foundation is, for the time being, untouchable.

But in the end, the FOIA may win out. Hillary left an electronic trail of corruption that may be her undoing. It'll take time, but ultimately we'll be able to follow the money. And when we do, the roar of a freight train will be heard in the near-distance.