Hillary Clinton may soon become an irrelevancy in the campaign, but her associations may continue to create questions about the Democratic Party. Following on the heels of Norman Hsu, Robert Feldman, and Mauricio Celis, McClatchy reports that another Texas fundraiser for Hillary has a history of fraud. Kase Lawal of Houston faces charges of fraud and corruption in Nigeria by the same crusading prosecutor who worked the Nigerian end of the William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson case:

A Texas oilman who’s accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton’s political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer who was convicted of defrauding Cuba. ….

[A] simple Google search by McClatchy produced reports of serious allegations about some of Lawal’s business dealings in Nigeria and South Africa.

Clinton’s campaign lists Lawal among about 250 “Hillraisers” who pledged to collect at least $100,000 in donations. Clinton attended a fundraising luncheon at Lawal’s home in Houston last Aug. 11 that generated more than $100,000, and she spoke to about 250 guests gathered around Lawal’s indoor swimming pool, including two former Houston mayors and Shell Oil President John Hofmeister.

When contacted by McClatchy, the Hillary Clinton campaign insisted that it carefully vets its fundraisers and as far as they know, Lawal is a pillar of his community. The Google search conducted by Greg Gordon and Will Connors belies the notion of any vetting at all. And Lawal is no mere contributor; like Hsu, the Ponzi-scheme fraudster who generated hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats, Lawal is a Hillraiser, one of her valued “bundlers”.

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Remember how Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton one of the most secretive politicians in America? That apparently applies to both Hillary and her husband as a team. Archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library have decided to keep the records of Bill’s pardons locked away from prying eyes — such as those of Obama, John McCain, and the media:

Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

That archivists’ decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Clinton’s legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.

The decision to withhold much of the requested material could provide fodder for critics who say that the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, have been unwilling to fully release documents to public scrutiny.

Hillary is a curious candidate. She wants to run on her “experience” as First Lady in the Clinton administration — but she wants us to see as little evidence of that experience as possible. In fact, she says that “experience” is so compelling that we would want her in the White House answering the phone at 3 AM when a crisis occurs. If it really is that impressive, why is she and Bill going to such lengths to hide it?

The pardons present a very tricky problem for Hillary. That really does speak to the character of the Clinton administration, and obviously not in glowing terms. In the final days of his administration, Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who had been a fugitive from American justice for tax evasion and other indictments, apparently because his ex-wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the presidential library that now hides those records. The Department of Justice had asked Clinton not to issue a pardon to Rich, as precedent had been not to grant clemency to fugitives, but that didn’t stop Clinton.

Marc Rich demonstrated why the Clintons had such faith in him by proceeding to become a major figure in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

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The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from an Internet search company that was co-founded by a convicted felon and backed by the Chinese government, public records show.

Mr. Clinton had gotten the nonpublicly traded stock from Accoona Corp. back in 2004 as a gift for giving a speech at a company event. He landed the windfall by selling the 200,000 shares to an undisclosed buyer in May 2006, commanding $3.50 a share at a time when the company was reporting millions of dollars of losses, according to interviews.

A spokesman for the William J. Clinton Foundation declined to identify the buyer who was willing to pay so much for a struggling company’s stock, saying only that the transaction was handled by a securities broker. It occurred seven months before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her bid to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

The spokesman, Ben Yarrow, declined last week to say whether Mr. Clinton knew about the Chinese government’s connection to Accoona or the felony fraud conviction of one of the company’s founders.

"President Clinton gave a speech; he did not endorse a product," Mr. Yarrow said.

The $700,000 capital gains was listed on the tax returns of Mr. Clinton’s foundation that were reviewed by The Washington Times.

The lack of disclosure about the buyer and the general activities of former presidents’ foundations troubles some ethics experts.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political money and ethics, said even though the law doesn’t require former presidents to disclose donations and stock transactions to their foundations, they should do so to avoid the appearance that money was buying special access.

"We’re in a unique period where the wife of a former president is running for the job of the son of a former president," she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton and the current President Bush.

Accoona offered its own Internet search engine as a rival to giants Google and Yahoo, and Mr. Clinton was the keynote speaker at the company’s Dec. 6, 2004, launch in New York. He even joked about the price of the stock that he was given that day as compensation for his speech.

"So I hope you get a big run-up in your stock price, I hope you have a great time doing it, but remember you’re doing something profoundly good for humanity and the future as you do," Mr. Clinton told Accoona executives.

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By Bruce Feirstein 

Was the press following the wrong Clinton this weekend?

Late Saturday afternoon, news stories began appearing on the web that Hillary Clinton had “mysteriously” missed her campaign flight from Dallas to Columbus, Ohio.

As Jake Tapper reported on AbcNews.com: “Her press aides came back to the press section of the plane and said they wouldn’t tell reporters anything about her whereabouts, except that she would rejoin the campaign in Ohio as scheduled Sunday morning.”

Obviously, we all know where she went. And judging by the largely positive response to her appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, I realize I may be the only one in the country who thinks she got very, very lucky here. For one thing, the clip that appeared everywhere the next morning showed only Senator Clinton’s “editorial response” and not the sketch that immediately preceded it, wherein Amy Poehler (playing Hillary) boasted of her unique qualifications for taking on special-interest groups like big oil:

“Someone so annoying, so pushy, so grating, so bossy and shrill, with a personality so unpleasant, that at the end of the day the special interests will have to go, ‘Enough! We give up! Life is too short to deal with this awful woman!’ … And I think the American people will agree, that someone is me.”

For another thing, while Hillary was doing SNL, Bill was off on his own magical mystery tour. As the The Toronto Star’s Lisa Wright reported Monday morning:

The wine was flowing while a convoy of stretch limos arrived at the Harbour Castle Westin Saturday night as Hollywood’s A-list and a select crowd of 1,200 mining industry types and Bay St. bigwigs attended a splashy fundraising gala at the invitation of former U.S. president Bill Clinton and his pal, Vancouver mining mogul Frank Giustra.

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So it turns out that Bill Clinton’s ties to mining mogul Frank Giustra extend far beyond the lucrative contract he won in Kazakhstan after the two of them shared a dinner with that nation’s president.

As Bloomberg News reported, over the past three years Giustra’s private commercial-sized jet has been turned into a veritable Air Bubba - whisking the ex-president around the world at least a dozen times for well-paid speaking engagements, personal fund-raising or stops to assist wife Hillary’s White House campaign.

Giustra has also become one of the Clinton Foundation’s largest benefactors - in a way, Bloomberg reported, that ties the foundation’s success with his own.

Though Clinton’s people angrily deny any ties between him and Giustra’s business interests, the Clinton history on such matters makes those protestations hard to take seriously.

Which causes us once again to ask a critical question:

When will Hillary Clinton finally release her tax returns?

This isn’t such a stretch: Bill and Hillary’s finances are co-mingled, and the senator recently loaned her sinking campaign $5 million.

Indeed, the loan was made at about the same time that Bill Clinton ended a business relationship with another longtime benefactor that allowed him to reap a $20 million bonanza.

On top of the $50 million he’s earned for himself and the hundreds of millions he’s picked up for his global charities - not to mention his presidential library.

Yet he refuses to identify most of the sources of all this cash.

What’s the big mystery?

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While shoppers took advantage of longer store hours and bargain prices this Presidents’ Day, the Democrats’ two candidates were probably doing some shopping of their own.  But it isn’t an HDTV, a new couch, or even the latest hot fashions that Obama and Clinton are shelling out their dollars for, it’s superdelegates. 

That’s right. Counterintuitive though it may seem, these electoral free agents — who, by the way, may actually decide the contest — are not restricted from accepting monetary motivation for their allegiances at the August convention. Any more than the candidates themselves are prevented from providing such fiscal incentive.
Now, a little voice from your brain’s rational region is likely whispering that this just can’t be so.  After all, such dealings would clearly amount to bribery, right?  Not quite.
Sure, money paid directly to primary voters or to the delegates themselves would never survive the corruption smell test. But, as with most things festering within the body politic, the stench of these dealings lingers deep enough beneath the surface not to be considered objectionable.
Here’s how the dirty little game is played:
As the majority of SDs are, themselves, elected officials, their own reelection rarely drifts far from their thoughts. Neither does the value of their campaign war chests, which apparently can be sweetened by the political action and campaign committees of the candidates without breaking a single law. And sweeten, they do.
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On June 21, 2005, Bill Clinton flew to Mexico City aboard a private jet that belonged to a Canadian investment banker he was meeting for the first time.

The introduction paid off for both men. Clinton was borrowing the jetliner to begin a four-day speaking tour of Latin America that would pay him $800,000. Frank Giustra of Vancouver was forming a friendship that would make him part of the former president’s inner circle and gain him introductions to presidents of Kazakhstan and Colombia, where he bought mineral rights.

Giustra, 50, has since put his plane at Clinton’s disposal at least a dozen times to raise money for charity, his wife’s presidential campaign or himself, according to U.S. flight records and spokesmen for Clinton and Giustra. The Canadian businessman has become one of the largest donors to the Clinton Foundation, pledging half his future minerals earnings in a way that ties the foundation’s success to his own.

“If former President Clinton is making decisions about where to put the charitable efforts of the Clinton Foundation based even partly on where he’s likely to benefit personally, or see his friends benefit, then that clearly is a classic conflict of interest,” says Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy in Washington.

Three months after Clinton and Giustra met, they traveled around the world together on a trip that included a stop in Kazakhstan where Clinton introduced Giustra, who was closing in on a $425 million mining investment there, to the Central Asian country’s leader. Giustra made millions on that deal.

Clinton Foundation Comments

“Mr. Giustra has publicly stated the philanthropic reasons for his contributions,” Ben Yarrow, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said in an e-mail when asked for comment on Clinton’s use of the Giustra plane. “Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless.”

“President Clinton travels on both private and commercial aircraft, including Mr. Giustra’s,” Yarrow said. “When President Clinton travels, his trips typically include multiple activities: foundation related, paid speeches, official, etc.”

Since he left the White House in 2001, Clinton, now 61, has earned more than $50 million for himself and raised hundreds of millions more for global charities, according to New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosures and foundation statements.

The former president has declined to identify most of his financial benefactors, including donors to his presidential library. He says he will make public the names of future contributors should his wife win the Democratic nomination.

`Pursuit of Money’

“Bill Clinton is the ex-president who has pushed the pursuit of money into the stratosphere, and will probably set a new bar for future ex-presidents,” says Bill Hogan, director of investigative projects at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit ethics watchdog in Washington, and head of its Buying of the President 2008 program.

“One can imagine an ex-president saying this is none of your business,” Hogan says. “It doesn’t work this time because Hillary Clinton is married to him, and she’s running for the highest office in the land.”

Tax authorities say Clinton may mix philanthropic fund raising with personal and political business so long as he clearly distinguishes who he represents at each juncture, and his foundation doesn’t participate directly in an election campaign.

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I thought McCain-Feingold was supposed to clean up campaign finance.

A torrent of secret money is flooding into the leading presidential campaigns, with more than $118 million, or one-quarter of the total raised in this cycle, banked without disclosure of who gave the funds or where the donations originated.

The money is coming from hundreds of thousands of donations of $200 or less, which have been widely praised for democratizing the system for funding White House bids. However, the surge in low-dollar gifts has come at the cost of transparency, since federal law only requires campaigns to itemize donations when a donor gives more than $200.

According to an analysis being released today by a Washington think tank, the Campaign Finance Institute, Senator Obama of Illinois led the pack with such small and secret donations, pulling in about $31 million during 2007. Rep. Ron Paul ran second in small gifts, raking in more than $17 million. At the end of the year, Senator Clinton and John Edwards, who has since dropped out, were essentially tied for third in unitemized, small contributions, with each candidate raising about $11 million.

The rules put the onus on the campaigns themselves to determine how and from where overseas funds can be accepted. Guess which candidate accepted funds from Syria and the “Occupied Territories?” Read the article to find out.

Source: Hot Air

SEN. Hillary Clinton has gotten cozy with a Turkish-born businessman whom some have described as anti-Semitic. Clinton’s campaign Web site identifies Mehmet Celebi as one of her "HillRaisers" - someone who has raised at least $100,000 for her presidential bid. This despite Celebi’s controversial producing credit on "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" - a 2006 movie that depicted a Jewish doctor removing the vital organs of civilian prisoners to sell to wealthy transplant patients overseas. "In accordance with the old anti-Semitic canard, the movie portrays Jewish-American doctors as forcibly harvesting organs from Muslims to give them to Jews," noted Detroit lawyer and columnist Debbie Schlussel observes on her blog. Clinton spokesman Jay Carson didn’t get back to us for comment.

Source: NY Post