The Clinton Machine, Still Hiding Secret Donors

The Clintons promised that they would disclose all donations flowing into the Clinton Foundation—and everyone was supposed to assume they were doing just that. But then we discovered last Spring that there were secret foreign donors giving them money while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

So who exactly are those secret donors? And when will the Clintons honor their promise to release them?

Flashback to April: with the release of the book Clinton Cash we exposed the fact that the Clintons had secret donations that they had never disclosed. The problem is that back in 2008 President Obama had made it a condition of Hillary’s appointment that the Clintons would publicly release every year the names of all the donors to the Clinton Foundation.

The Clinton team actually signed a written memorandum of understanding with the Obamas to that effect. And the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by then-Senator John Kerry, were told by Hillary Clinton in written testimony that the names of all donors would be released on an annual basis.

Clinton Cash revealed that the Clintons had received millions in donations that were never disclosed. These included donations from Ian Telfer, the Chairman of a Canadian uranium company that was bought by the Russian government. (Hillary’s State Department had to sign off on the deal.)

There were also donations from Stephen Dattels, another Canadian mining investor, who had donated shares of stock in his company Polo Resources. Weeks after the Clinton Foundation received 2 million shares of stock in the company, Hillary’s State Department pressed the government of Bangladesh to allow open pit coal mining in their country. Polo Resources was a major shareholder in the the Phulbari Mines.

Following these revelations in Clinton Cash, news outlets from the New York Times to the Washington Post reported that there were more than a thousand donors to the Clinton Foundation that had never been disclosed.

The Clinton Foundation claimed that it couldn’t disclose the donations because of Canadian privacy laws. This was a ridiculous claim, given that individuals such as Stephen Dattels had publicly acknowledged their donations on websites. And the New York Times demolished the idea that the Canadian privacy laws prevented such disclosures.

“Under pressure” by the media to come clean, as the McClatchy New Service put it, the Clintons and their financial rainmaker Frank Giustra announced that they were going to disclose the names in the not too distant future. They have since disclosed 21 names. That was six months ago. Where are the other 1,076 names? Why are they hiding these donations? Why has the media lost interest?

Also curious is the fact that the Canadian arm of the Clinton Foundation that collected the money indicated on Canadian tax filings that some of the funds had come from non-Canadian sources. So where exactly is the money coming from?

This is a matter of simple transparency, something the Clintons promsied the American people and President Obama. They need to come clean and disclose these donors.