Both Ways

As I have noted on numerous occasions, The Clinton Foundation is a scam at best and a criminally indictable scheme for influence peddling and personal enrichment (for the Clintons) at the worst. Now we see that a number of left-leaning publications and at least one Democrat politician are urging the Clintons to discontinue the Foundation should she be elected president. Chris Stirewalt comments:

There’s hubris and then there’s the Clintons.

The news is that former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea will stop raising money for the family’s foundation and that the organization would stop accepting foreign contributions if Hillary Clinton gets elected.

Think about that one for a second.

If Clinton’s critics are right and her family’s foundation was little more than a legalized form of bribing the woman who stands poised to become president of the United States, then what would the significance be of the foundation vowing to stop accepting foreign contributions if Clinton is elected?

Why a gold rush of influence buying between now and Election Day, of course! Hurry, hurry everybody, this is a last chance to get in good with the next commander in chief.

If Clinton and her supporters were right that the foundation is a unique and essential global charity that does essential work, why would one change course? Would Jonas Salk have ditched the polio vaccine because people complained about his funding? Would Marie Curie have dropped the radium just because she was getting cash from some unsavory sources?

The answer from Team Clinton would be that the ban on foreign funds and diminished role for the family would avoid the “appearance of impropriety.”

But if it appears that there might be an impropriety on Nov. 8, why not now?

The pressure is growing on Clintons on the left to unwind their massive buckraking efforts. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and the Boston Globe editorial page both added to the weight this week. Rather than swift response though, we get what has been the hallmark of Clinton’s second White House run: caution imbued with arrogance.

This is actually funny. For years, Democrats have been mum about the Clinton's enterprise. Not one questioned how the Clintons achieved a nine digit net worth with no notable source of income except speech making—it's not easy to acquire $100+ million unless ... well, unless you're running a "charity" for yourselves with willing foreign entities providing millions for quid pro quo influence. Not a single trained hamster in the media suggested that possibly The Clinton Foundation was a conflict of interest. Not one did any serious investigative reporting. Not one Democrat legislator said boo, when a book like Clinton Cash (a serious investigative report) was published with copious evidence of wrong doing. Not one supporter questioned whether a reported 90 percent administrative overhead for the Foundation was appropriate or ethical. Not one.

But now that Hillary looks like a lock for the presidency, every one of those supporters is worried that a hack, a leak, or a stray email might expose significant wrongdoing and derail her candidiacy. The solution is easy—shut the criminal enterprise down -- sooner rather than later. That will fix fifteen years of wrongdoing, won't it? The Clinton Foundation will be "old news"—after all, it's shut down -- there's no there there. It's also interesting that no one suggested shutting down the Foundation when she was appointed Secretary of State. Why was it okay for the Foundation to remain in place then, but questionable now?

There's only one problem. As Stirewalt notes, if the The Clinton Foundation is everything that Hillary's defenders say it is, why on earth would anyone want to shut it down? After all, the poor bedraggled little children that benefit from the reported 10 percent of foundation revenues that actually get to them will suffer, won't they? Hillary is either a charitable philanthropist (keep the foundation open) or a money laundering fraud (close it). Dems can't have it both ways.