Despite claims of leaving the White House dead broke, the Clintons have made a fortune since Bill was president. The Clinton Foundation has been thought to be a front for selling political influence by watchdogs on both the right and left. While Republicans think that Hillary wiped the server containing her email to prevent revelations on Benghazi, it is far more likely that if she was covering anything up it related to financial contributions. Reuters has previously reported that Clinton has violated promises to disclose contributions to the Foundation when she was made Secretary of State. Now The Hill, The International Business Times, and Common Dreams are reporting that Hillary Clinton does appear to have altered her views in return for financial contributions to the Foundation from Columbia.
The Hill reports that “The Clinton Foundation reportedly accepted millions of dollars from a Colombian oil company head before then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to support a trade deal with Colombia despite worries of human rights violations.”
Common Dreams further summarizes the reports:
A new investigative look at the ties between big business interests in Colombia, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her family’s charitable foundation are raising troubling questions about the role that corporate trade deals and big oil may have played in softening the powerful Democrat’s position on human rights in the South American country.
During her time heading the State Department, presumptive 2016 presidential nominee Clinton stayed silent on reports of violence and threats against labor activists in Colombia, even as her family’s “global philanthropic empire” was developing—and benefiting from—private business ties with a major oil corporation accused of worker-intimidation in the country, according to new reporting published Thursday by International Business Times.
In addition, the IBT investigation shows that after millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation, Clinton reversed her position on a U.S.-Colombia trade pact she had previously opposed on the grounds that it was bad for labor rights.
As IBT journalists Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Andrew Perez, and David Sirota report:
At the same time that Clinton’s State Department was lauding Colombia’s human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant’s founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.
“The details of these financial dealings remain murky,” the article states, “but this much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation—supplemented by millions more from Giustra himself—Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact.”
What’s more, an IBT review of public State Department documents shows that “as the Giustra-Clinton foundation relationship deepened, Hillary Clinton and the State Department never criticized or took action against the Colombian government for alleged violations of labor rights at Pacific Rubiales.”
Quite the opposite, in fact: “Instead, Clinton’s State Department issued certifications in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 declaring that Colombia has been complying with human rights standards that are required under federal law for continued U.S. military aid to the country.”
It looks like when Hillary Clinton announces her campaign, she might promise to be the best president money can buy.
Meanwhile in other Clinton news today, Politico reports on both questionable contributions from Morocco along with how “her husband’s presidential library here is spilling more secrets about her top advisers’ efforts to burnish her image during the eight years she spent as first lady.”