How much does it cost to shut down a US industry and create a monopoly for a foreign nation? Well, the number $28 million would be a good estimate:

Hillary Clinton did two huge favors for Morocco during her tenure as secretary of state while the Clinton Foundation accepted up to $28 million in donations from the country’s ruler, King Mohammed VI, according to new information obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group. Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson tried to shut down the Florida-based Mosaic Company in 2011, operator of America’s largest phosphate mining facility. Jackson’s close ties and loyalty to the Clintons were revealed when she joined the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors in 2013, just months after she left the EPA. Jackson is also close to John Podesta, Clinton’s national campaign chairman. Morocco’s state-owned phosphate company, OCP, would ostensibly have benefited from Jackson’s move to shut down Mosaic. Mohammed donated up to $15 million to the Clinton Foundation through OCP.

There are several threads to this story.

Back in 1975, Morocco engineered the reconquista of the Spanish colony of Western Sahara. At some point, the new Moroccan territory was supposed to be allowed to vote on independence. Unfortunately, Western Sahara has enormous reserves of phosphate and Morocco decided it would be a national tragedy if it were allowed to slip away. Morocco remains in control of Western Sahara despite UN resolutions and rulings by the International Court of Justice.

None of that really mattered to Hillary Clinton who has never allowed mere principles and legalities to stand between her and a few dollars.

…[Moroccan King Mohammed VI] donated up to $15 million to the Clinton Foundation through OCP [the state owned phosphate mining company]. Clinton also relaxed U.S. foreign aid restrictions on Morocco, thus allowing U.S. funds to be used in the territory of Western Sahara where OCP operates phosphate mining operations. The aid restrictions stemmed from Morocco’s illegal occupation of the territory since 1974. Morocco is repeatedly condemned for seizing the territory and for unilaterally extracting the country’s valuable minerals, impoverishing what’s left of the local Sahrawi Arabs. No nation recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara and the United Nation’s Security Council legal office and the International Court of Justice both demand that Muhammed withdraw his claim over the territory and end illegal extraction of minerals. An email Wikileaks made public last week illustrated how Clinton, while acting as secretary of state, negotiated an additional $12 million donation to the Clinton Foundation from Muhammed in return for holding the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in Marrakech, Morocco. Another $1 million payment came from OCP to cover the expenses of the CGI meeting.

At about the same time, the US EPA began an concentrated assault on phosphate mining in Florida

The regulatory assault against the U.S. phosphate industry began in earnest when Jackson launched a barrage of intimidating regulatory initiatives against Mosaic. Environmental concerns about phosphates date from 1979 but the EPA did little to address concerns related to phosphate mining until Jackson’s 2011 moves. The regulatory assault on the U.S. phosphate industry encompassed several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS.) DHS aircraft flew at low altitudes over Mosaic’s central Florida operations in search of environmental problems. The EPA also threatened large Superfund penalties, which could have bankrupted Mosaic. Phosphates are essential ingredients in fertilizers used in American farming. Closing or reducing Mosaic’s output would have cost tens of thousands of American jobs and injured the country’s agricultural productivity. It also would leave the U.S. dependent upon foreign phosphate producers, but particularly Morocco’s OCP. The only other countries that mine phosphates are Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

This is not shocking unless you have harbored illusions about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Time and time again during the first Clinton administration and during Hillary’s reign at State a donation to the Clinton Foundation or one of its devil-spawn resulted in something good being done for the donor by the US government. In this case, not only did Clinton flout international refusal to recognize Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara but she seems to have actively or tacitly tried to have her crony at the EPA shut down a US company in order to direct a financial windfall to her foundation’s donor.