Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich Hardcover – May 5, 2015

I'm kind of startled by this book. There is never a 'smoking gun' moment but there IS a shocking pattern of behavior that must have taken incredible effort to research. The media seems to have failed to do the hard work of researching to this depth, but they are on the story now that Schweizer has pointed them in the correct direction.

I was amazed by how this book was both incredibly readable and incredibly well-sourced. I could easily work through it and if something caught my interest I could quickly dive deeper into the sources provided, many of which were available online.

I'm not sure how much this will affect Clinton's campaign but I do think everybody in America should be aware of the contents of this book. Maybe if they were, we could have a REAL Democratic primary!

Tens of millions of dollars have gone to the Clinton Foundation, and tens of millions more to the ex-president in the form of speaking fees from around the world. Both fundings have primarily come from foreign governments and businessmen, and quite often are temporally associated with deals involving U.S. actions that benefit the donors and required approvals from our government.

It has long been illegal for foreigners to contribute to U.S. political campaigns. Yet, that hasn't deterred the Clintons from this parallel practice. Further, the amounts of these donations, per Schweizer, are often far larger than allowable campaign contributions. Thus, the Clintons have become quite wealthy - Bill Clinton receiving $105 million in speaking fees through 2012..(Also donations to the Clinton library, the Democratic Party, etc.) This pattern of major donations followed by major beneficial U.S. government acts (eg. dropping proposed regulations, DOJ investigations, and the Marc Rich pardon) began in 1999 while Clinton was still president.

An obvious question - Why haven't these foreign donors (eg. in India) given money directly to local charities instead of to the Clinton Foundation? Another - Doesn't this make Hillary's deleting innumerable official emails while Secretary of State especially suspicious?

Prior to Hillary's being approved as Secretary of State, a detailed agreement was worked out requiring public notification of gifts from foreign entities and businessmen, as well as prior approval for donations from foreign government-owned businesses. Unfortunately, this agreement was almost immediately violated.

The bulk of Schweizer's excellent report consists of detailing various donations and possibly associated U.S. government actions. The most glaring - selling control of a major U.S. uranium resource to Russia, while we don't even have enough of that invaluable fuel for our own current power needs. He also points out that the Clinton's most 'profitable' responses don't occur in nations where business and politics are separated by rules (eg. Germany, G.B.), but 'in despotic areas of the world where the rules are very different.' There, when the government needed to help a Clinton supporter/cause was, naturally, a despot, Bill Clinton would even praise that person for his 'enlightened rule.' Another damning observation - 'In his first eight years on the global lecture circuit, Bill had never been paid to speak in Nigeria. But once Hillary was appointed secretary of state, he booked two of his top three highest-paid speeches ever by traveling to Nigeria, pulling in a whopping $700,000 each.'

No matter what I write about this book someone will take offense, dismiss and attack what I write without reading a word of it. So, when you look at the votes and read the comments, take it all with a box of Morton Salt. This is a book that was written to draw lightning. Some of the writers who defend the Clintons, such as Newsweek, review this book as a hatchet job. Others will dismiss any examination of the author’s motives as unfair and irrelevant. I say, let the facts speak and judge the author on whether he is asking serious questions, presenting honest evidence, and drawing reasonable conclusions. In my view, he is. He is not making claims beyond what the evidence supports, but he does ask why there are always a preposterous number of coincidences around Bill and Hillary and everything they do. And how something that enriches this couple so fabulously can also somehow be characterized as both public service and charity.

Mind you, Hillary was the one claiming poverty when trying to get mortgages (plural) for their homes (also plural). They were part of the political wing that vilified Romney for his wealth without ever blushing at their being in the same ball park as him. Romney at least made his money in the private sector. The Clintons seem to have made theirs by trading on the political connections and power while dancing on a razor’s edge away from the legal definition of illegality. And somehow, for the Clintons and their acolytes, if they aren’t on videotape actually admitting to taking cash for delivering political favors it somehow never happened. As you read the evidence around the transactions reported in this book, I think you have to have some pretty thick rose colored lenses to not see some difficulty in the connections, arrangements, deals, payments, and reporting of the transactions as required by law. But we can each judge for ourselves. The Clintons hope you will reject the book. Hillary’s opponents hope you will either embrace it, or at least begin asking some probing questions of your own and go digging for more evidence.

The Clintons have a well-practiced and effective Method of dealing with an immediate crisis caused when yet another scandal arises, and they always do with these two. It works like this: The scandal breaks and Team Clinton immediately sends out people like Begala and Carville to attack the reporters, whistleblowers, or regular folks who dare tell the world what is going on. Another group of somewhat more removed Clintonistas hit the air, cable, and print media to deny the scandal outright. The Clintons avoid speaking for as long as possible. The idea is to consume as many of the information cycles as possible with their own accusations and denials to overwhelm the scandal outright. If they can’t do that and they must speak, they know it doesn’t matter what they say. It can be directly in conflict with the evidence because they have put so much by way of denial in the media that the “fair” media will quote the denials as if they were legitimate bits of evidence, too. Eventually, another event comes along and bumps this scandal from the headlines and then it will either go away or, if it does come back into view, they just refuse to discuss it as old news and declare that the public knows it was politically motivated and that there is nothing to it. Really. This is their method. And it works for them. Absurdly; it works.

You can see a similar method used by those on the Left here on Amazon and right here with this book. They will latch on to a book they hate and provide a vast number of one-star "reviews" of a sentence or two that say nothing at all except claiming the book is all lies, or old and outdated claims that have been disproven, or that the author is in thrall to the Koch brothers or some other Conservative paymaster. They often use fake names so you can't even tell if the same person is posting multiple attacks using multiple accounts. It is always the same. The idea is to overwhelm the book with so many reviews that the real reviews get hidden in the clutter and people just stop looking and reading. Do you see this pattern? Of course you do. It is right in front of your eyes.

The Clintons have raked in billions for their foundation (The Family Business) by using another well-oiled and smoothly running operation that works something like this. You can see a version of it in every deal cited in this book.

A super rich person the Clintons want as a donor and who needs or wants a piece of influence peddled for them by the Clinton Machine for their nation, oil venture, uranium deals, their for profit university, their “non-profit” charity, telemarketing business, or whatever, walks into the shadow of the great Sun of the Clinton Sphere of Influence. Checks are written to the Clinton Foundations, fabulously rich speaking fees are paid, and lavish travel and accommodations are provided to Bill and/or Hillary. While on scene giving the speech, photo opportunities and favorable stories are provided on camera to great fanfare and wide media coverage for the charitable work being publicized. Once the lights, cameras, and recorders are turned off and in the quiet after the reporters go off to wherever it is reporters go when not flacking for the Clintons, deals are worked out in quiet rooms without anything being done directly that breaks the law or at least not recorded and becoming evidence for breaking the law. Remember, this is all about access to the Clinton world. They provide connections to a vast entourage of connected influencers. The price of admission are the big donations to the Clinton Foundation and the fees to Bill and Hillary.

But unseemly is not illegal and seems to be something the Clintons are very comfortable with as they “do good” in the world for their Foundation. More money flows to the Foundation in seven figures and more. Mere millions are minor donations according to Lanny Davis on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Somehow, despite assurances of transparency by Bill and Hillary, these donations are generally not reported until they are caught not reporting them. Even when they are caught in a compromising position, the media barely talks about it because the Clintons declare them an oversight and promise to fix them right away. And because the public is never told to care it doesn’t pay attention to the absurdity of this level of corruption by someone running for President; essentially for a third and fourth term of the Clinton Machine.

The issues raised by Schweitzer in this book are serious and the Clintons need to answer for the vast ocean of money raised. We have already seen them admit to more than $30 million raised from more than a thousand donors that they never reported to authorities as was required by law and their own promises of transparency. That seems far too systematic and large-scale to be the mere mistake they want us to believe. Will the press hold them accountable? We shall see. I hope so, but won't hold my breath. What I honestly don't get is how Progressives who honestly believe in their agenda can stomach this kind of naked profiteering, money grubbing, influence peddling, and corruption so enthusiastically. Over the years we have seen that there is no shame from the Clintons; ever. But from the entire Democrat party? From all the Progressive Media? I mean the way the Clintons behave would make a Tammany Hall blush and Huey Long stare at their operations in admiration at the audacity of it all.

Those of us who remember the scandals from the first and second Clinton Administrations do not want to go through them again. But their fans will forgive them anything. Anything. And the Clintons have more than $2 billion raised by their vast machine to ensure they regain the Whitehouse.

Will we let them have it?

I hope not.

This book will never persuade anyone who is already worshipping at the altar of Hillary. Not because it fails to present convincing evidence and powerful arguments, but because those who already believe in Our Hillary - Right Or Wrong are not looking for evidence or weighing arguments.

While the book is interesting to those of us who could never be persuaded to vote for her under any circumstance whatsoever, the more interesting question is whether this book can get the traction with the public to start raising questions in the minds of those who might be leaning towards Hillary but have concerns or are leaning away from her and need a little more to move further away. I hope it does. In any case, I hope you get the book, read it with an open mind and think about the ridiculous number of coincidences the Clintons want you to believe don’t provide evidence of corrupt dealing.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson – Saline, MI