When Hillary Clinton was first nominated to be Secretary of State there were concerns regarding conflicts of interest and the risk of corruption. Clinton entered into an agreement in which she would disclose all the donors to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton failed to release this information regarding donors as she agreed, and also acted unethically with both the Clinton Foundation and her husband receiving money from parties which Clinton was making decisions regarding at the State Department.
After the email scandals of during the Bush administration, Barack Obama initiated stronger rules regarding use of email. Clinton proceeded to violate these rules, along with older rules dealing with government transparency.
Ethical and legal violations in government agencies are handled by the Inspector General’s office. The office was kept vacant when Clinton was Secretary of State. Since her actions at the State Department became public, the FBI has been brought in to investigate both her use of a private email server and financial issues regarding the Clinton Foundation at the request of two Inspectors General.
Hillary Clinton loves to claim that all her problems are the result of a vast right wing conspiracy against her. That is getting harder to claim when many of the news reports are coming from the liberal media, and when her actions are being investigated by Inspectors General in the Obama administration plus the FBI in the Obama administration.
What the Clinton camp makes up in chutzpah what they lack in integrity. The Hill reports that the chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign is now attacking the Inspector General:
John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, says there are “serious questions” about the integrity of the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The OIG is locked in an increasingly contentious fight with Clinton’s campaign on a host of issues, including her use of a private email account during her time as secretary of State.
It has also reportedly subpoenaed the Clinton Foundation for documents related to charity projects and is investigating close Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s work as a “special government consultant” while she worked at State.
A source within the OIG contacted The Hill claiming that the office has grown increasingly partisan, accusing it of having an “anti-Clinton” bias. ..
An OIG official strongly disputed the source’s account.
“Partisan politics play no role in OIG’s work,” the spokesman said Monday…
Clinton campaign officials have argued that the various OIG probes are simply intended to hurt Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“They have mounted several different fishing expedition-style investigations since she decided to run for president,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last month. “There’s no basis to any of them, and I think that it’s intended to create headwinds for her campaign.”
This is getting increasingly Nixonian, reminiscent of the means employed by Richard Nixon to stonewall investigations of his criminal acts while president. It is quite troubling to see Clinton’s campaign stoop to such tactics when there is already substantial evidence of ethical violations, violations of regulations intended to promote the publics’ right to know what is occurring in the government, along with possible criminal violations.
The manner in which Clinton kept the Inspector General’s office vacant while she was Secretary of State, and her campaign is now attacking the office for investigating her conduct, also raises serious questions regarding corruption which might occur in the Executive Branch should Clinton be elected. She has made it clear that she does not accept the conventional channels used to reduce government corruption.
