It's inaccurate to talk about the "Clinton emails" in relation to the latest fooflah related to Hillary Clinton's tenure at State. The emails in question are actually those to and from Huma Abedin.
In the last 24 hours, I've read in CNN, the Washington Post, and ABC News, how recently published emails released by our friends, Judicial Watch, show that Clinton is in under fire because of "troubling" connections between State and the Clinton Foundation donors . In NBC News, I read how Trump has called for an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
I have to wonder if any of the pundits and journalists actually read the emails. Because if they had, they would have noticed, as Kevin Drum has, that this whole thing really is absurd.
If some of these efforts had succeeded, that would hardly be noteworthy. It's the kind of thing that happens all the time. What's really noteworthy about the most recent email releases is that they demonstrate a surprisingly high level of integrity from Hillary Clinton's shop at Foggy Bottom. Huma Abedin was tasked with running interference on favor seekers, and she seems to have done exactly that. There's no evidence at all that being a donor to the Clinton Foundation helped anyone out.
Not only was there absolutely no demonstration of "pay-to-play" in the Clinton Foundation communications with Abedin, the news media seems to have forgotten that the Clinton Foundation is a charitable organization. Among other things, it provides low-cost access to HIV drugs for over 8 million people a year. That's in addition to the work it does creating schools, helping farmers, and its various clean energy and environmental efforts.
The media also has done a poor job of noting that none of the Clintons financially benefit from the Foundation (financial filing). Yes, Chelsea Clinton is on the board. But Chelsea has a salary of exactly $0.00. That's $15 dollars less, an hour, than what the Democrats want to implement as a minimum wage.
In addition, the media has a problem with math. Case in point, there is a handful of emails between the Clinton Foundation and Abedin. A handful of emails, in four years. There's not a mathematician in the world who could deduce a pattern of behavior with that small a sampling.
But that doesn't stop the media.
Then there's NBC News, bereft at the loss of the Olympics, reporting Donald Trump's demand for a special prosecutor to investigate the emails—not to mention his demand to shut the Clinton Foundation down.
Donald Trump...the man who will not release his IRS tax forms. The man who will not create a blind trust for his businesses if he were elected. The man who would leave his children in charge of the businesses, and also invite his children to get involved in his Presidency.
The man whose only act of charity we can discover is he used his Trump Foundation money to bid on a Tim Tebow autographed helmet, which evidently he kept.
Of course, the smart thing to do would be to file a FOIA with State Department under Kerry, to see if the Clinton Foundation also contacted State Department employees during his tenure. We could also look for other international foundation contacts during Clinton's tenure. We'd most likely find that the Abedin emails are not unusual, and pretty standard for the State Department, as the State Department has stated.
The problem is, Judicial Watch, its 100+ FOIA lawsuits, and the helpful federal judges who seem to think that the State Department can magically create more FOIA workers, have the State Department's FOIA processes so tied up, that none of us will be able to get any request through for the next four years.
This breaking of the State FOIA system suits Judicial Watch, just fine. It now controls what information is released from the State Department. Best of all, we get to pay millions for the privilege of losing our access.
I wonder why CNN, ABC, NBC, Washington Post and the rest don't cover this as a story? Since they obviously have so much time on their hands.
