The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has confirmed that Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State, made a personal call in March 2011 to pressure—my sourcesays says “demand”—that Bangladesh’s prime minister restore Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, to his previous position as chairman of the country’s most prominent microcredit bank, Grameen Bank. The bank’s nonprofit, Grameen America, which Yunus chairs, had donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. (Gee, I wonder why.) There is a recent video of Hasina explaining this episode to her Parliament. To be clear, it was illegal for Hillary Clinton to use her position and influence with the U.S. government to assist any donor to her spouse’s charitable foundation, and if you really think it was just her spouse’s, I have a perpetual motion machine for sale that you might like. She also knew it was illegal. Federal ethics laws require government officials to recuse themselves from matters that have an impact on their family’s business. Federal laws prohibit bribes, too. Yunus had been disqualified from serving in the position, but had illegally served anyway, and collected a salary, for a decade past the statutory limit. After complaints were filed, he was terminated by order of the high Bangladesh court. So not only was Clinton delivering a political favor bought and paid for by a Clinton Foundation “donation,” she was asking the Prime Minister to break her own nation’s laws.

This is real, stinky, high-level, low-class corruption. There is no other way to describe it. Clinton was using her position with the U.S. government for personal profit, and abusing the public trust by doing the bidding of foreign nationals in exchange for cash. Moreover, you know and I know that this could not have been some weird one-off aberration due to Hillary’s interest in Bangladesh. If she did this once there, she did it in other instances. I cannot emphasize enough how serious conduct it is. It is as unethical, venal and dirty as public service gets.