The State Department’s Special Attention for ‘Friends of Bill’

October 12, 2016

The State Department's Special Attention for 'Friends of Bill'

Why should anyone think that a Hillary Clinton administration would operate any differently from Hillary Clinton's State Department?

In a series of candid email exchanges with top Clinton Foundation officials during the hours after the massive 2010 Haiti earthquake, a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly gave special attention to those identified by the abbreviations "FOB" (friends of Bill Clinton) or "WJC VIPs" (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).

"Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC," wrote Caitlin Klevorick, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation. "Most I can probably ID but not all."

"Is this a FOB!" Klevorick writes later, when a Clinton Foundation aide forwards a woman's offer of medical supplies. "If not, she should go to cidi.org," she adds, directing the person deemed not to be a Clinton friend to a general government website.

If you're a friend of the Clintons, you will get special treatment, despite their repeated insistence that nothing of the sort would ever happen or could ever happen.

The Clintons have said repeatedly that the State Department never gave favorable treatment to foundation supporters in Haiti or anywhere else.

"Nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the foundation," Bill Clinton told CBS News' Charlie Rose in September. "Nothing."

"I want you to listen to me: I did not . . . have . . . directional relations with that contributor."

The correspondence offers a glimpse into the first stages of a $10 billion Haiti recovery effort. The emails appear to show a State Department process that at times prioritized — and, some argue, benefited — people with close ties to the Clintons.

Under a Hillary Clinton presidency, why would we not expect taxpayer dollars to be used for polling for the Clintons?

While Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, U.S. officials included a question measuring Bill Clinton's popularity in Haiti in an ongoing poll of the country's citizens, and the State Department shared the results privately with the former president, internal government emails show.

"This is for WJC," Hillary Clinton's then–chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, wrote in an email to a senior Clinton Foundation official in October 2010, referring to William Jefferson Clinton. "It is not for public reference or use until we publish key elements."

The U.S. government started polling Haitians in 2007, under President George W. Bush. The 68-page survey conducted in 2010 for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which works closely with the State Department, measured how Haitians felt about public safety, politics, Haitian leadership, the U.S. and its relief efforts in Haiti after a devastating earthquake there killed more than 200,000 people and leveled much of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

It's not the job of the State Department to measure the popularity of former U.S. presidents in foreign countries.

Tremble Before the Awesome Power of the Egg McMuffin

Hey, remember Evan McMullin, a.k.a. Egg McMuffin, the independent conservative who's a complete afterthought in this election and who's obviously not going to get a significant amount of votes anywhere?

He's at 22 percent in Utah, according to a new poll.

. . . along with the billionaire businessman's sudden fall, independent candidate and BYU graduate Evan McMullin surged into a statistical tie with the two major party presidential nominees, according to survey conducted Monday and Tuesday by Salt Lake City-based Y2 Analytics.

"A third-party candidate could win Utah as Utahns settle on one," said Quin Monson, Y2 Analytics founding partner.

McMullin may well have caught lightning in a bottle.

The poll shows Clinton and Trump tied at 26 percent, McMullin with 22 percent and Libertarian Gary Johnson getting 14 percent if the election were held today. Y2 Analytics surveyed 500 likely Utah voters over landlines and cellphones Oct. 10-11. The poll has a plus or minus 4.4 percent margin of error.

Let's check out that Twelfth Amendment again.

The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.

The McMullin strategy requires no candidate to get 270 electoral votes. (Right now, Hillary Clinton looks like a safe bet to reach that, but the race could change in the coming weeks.) If McMullin wins Utah, he will have six electoral votes. Presuming Gary Johnson and Jill Stein win no electoral votes, McMullin will be among "the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President" and thus, the House would have the option of electing him President. (This assumes, of course, that House Republicans would be fine giving the Oval Office to a guy who won only small fraction of the votes nationwide, and only one state.)

'My Dream Is a Hemispheric Common Market, with Open Trade and Open Borders'

Donald Trump absolutely must bring up Hillary's comments about a "hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" in the next debate. He has to remember the specific quote, and the specific speech in which she made it, and press her on it, and not let her wiggle out from under with saying that she only meant better trade or easier travel for vacations or some other excuse.

John Kass explains how this is a big deal, and the sort of enormously consequential idea that a presidential race ought to focus upon:

It's Hillary Clinton's dream of an America without borders, as expressed to investors of a Brazilian bank, in comments leaked by WikiLeaks.

An America without borders, Hillary? How positively George Soros of you, Madam Secretary.

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that's as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere," Clinton reportedly said to investors in a paid speech she gave to Brazilian Banco Itau in 2013.

Here's the thing about borders. If you don't have borders, you don't have a country. Americans are beginning to understand this. Europeans understand it now, quite clearly.

Do we want to become the American equivalent of the European Union? If that is Hillary's dream, why is she not campaigning on "open trade and open borders"? Does she only reveal her dream when she's speaking behind closed doors to Brazilian bankers?

ADDENDA: Everybody's in denial about something. A point trimmed from yesterday's piece:

The two major party candidates both ran in opposition to any serious ideas about entitlement reform — four years after Mitt Romney's plan was used as a cudgel against him. The electorate has spoken: Don't deal with Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare. Assume it will last forever and be fine. The current $19.6 trillion debt is an afterthought when it's mentioned at all.

This was the biggest year of denials for Hillary Clinton since 2012, when her State Department denied Ambassador Chris Stephens the additional security he wanted.