Corrupt

You gotta give the Clinton Campaign credit—they exhibit incredible message discipline and have an awesome response team. You really do need that, given that you're trying to avoid jail time for your candidate and get her elected President of the United States instead. The campaign's approach was never more evident than its response to a devastating AP report (kudos to the AP for doing the job that real journalists are supposed to do) on The Clinton Foundation pay-to-play activities.

When questioned by the trained media hamsters on MSNBC or CNN (to name only two outlets) after the AP report was published, Clinton's people condemned the AP piece by suggesting that it was "cherry picking" and "unfair" and "highly partisan." They and their media allies argue that there is no smoking gun, as if that negates the dozens of irrefutable facts that indict the Clintons for their influence peddling (and personal enrichment) activities. They didn't mention that the AP fought for three years to get Hillary's schedules from the State Department (the department was trying to stonewall the information) and had to sue to get them. Clinton supporters noted, as did the AP, that Clinton met with a few good people who did good works, but they conveniently forgot the dozens of shady characters (many from very shady foreign regimes) who were involved in her pay-to-play scheme. ArkansasOnline provides us with only one example:

Many of those donations come from more than suspect sources--like Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch whose family led a regime notorious for its corruption and repression. He was responsible for contributing between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, lending his private plane to the Clintons and attending Bill Clinton's big 65th birthday extravaganza in Los Angeles.

Douglas Schoen used to be one of Bill Clinton's political consultants, and he set up about a dozen meetings with State Department officials with or on behalf of Mr. Pinchuk between September 2011 and November 2012.

Strange, or maybe not so strange, how the Clinton Foundation and American foreign policy kept intersecting when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Or as a Ukrainian American named Melanne Verveer, who was working for the State Department at the time, emailed Secretary Clinton: "I had breakfast with Pinchuk. He will see you at the Brookings lunch." It's all coming out in the wash, or rather in a lawsuit filed by Citizens United to get a peek at her emails.

But Clinton and her team maintain message discipline—the Clinton foundation does good charitable works (e.g., ridding Africa of AIDS). Unfortunately, the trained hamsters in the media don't follow up a statement like that by asking a simple question—"What verifiable percentage of charitable income is dedicated to those good works?" Or ... why does the Clinton Foundation have a $21 million travel budget, much of which was used for 5-star hotels and private jets?, or "Is Chelsea Clinton $600,000 plus salary plus expense account in line with the salaries provided by other charities?"

I'm not sure any of this will matter in terms of the election. Clinton is protected by a phalanx of media allies (the trained hamsters) and the pay-to-play story is complex. Unlike the AP, few media types have any inclination to dig deep on this story, for fear that they will uncover a smoking gun and then be blamed from derailing her presidential bid.

But as more and more information comes out, Hillary Clinton looks more and more corrupt.