The “pay-to-play” scandal between the Clinton Foundation and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been defended by claiming Secretary Clinton took no actionable steps to change State Dept. policy as a result of payment to the Foundation.

However, as the relationships between the Foundation and the State Department gain increased scrutiny the “access” to Clinton appears to be the purpose for the payments. Sooner or later someone is going to mention the mysterious 2012 “Thanksgiving Holiday Fire” directly above Hillary’s office in the State Dept.

WASHINGTON DC – Hillary Clinton’s national finance director has emerged in newly released emails as what one watchdog called the “middle” man between her State Department and family foundation, sharing donor information with a top Clinton confidante when he was working at the foundation.

Dennis Cheng, before joining the campaign, worked for over three years as the foundation’s director of development and before that as deputy chief of protocol in Clinton’s State Department.

He has managed to stay below the radar for years, but emails obtained by Citizens United in a Freedom of Information Act request show him working closely with Clinton aide Huma Abedin – particularly after leaving the department for the foundation.

In one 2012 exchange, Cheng sent a nine-page email to Abedin to prepare Clinton for a briefing on the 67 VIP’s attending a foundation dinner. The guests ranged from major real estate and business executives to former politicians and aid organization representatives.

The email, sent while Cheng was working at the foundation, shows how seamlessly Clinton’s aides moved between government service and the foundation, staying in contact with one another and sharing details about VIP’s connected to the group. Based on the emails, Clinton was getting information about the foundation dinner in preparation for a briefing on who was attending – while at the department.

The emails come amid a slew of recent reports showing the Clinton State Department’s frequent interaction with foundation donors, fueling critics’ claims that donations bought access. The campaign has rejected these allegations. (read more)

The Clinton Campaign has targeted the Associated Press for reporting on the donors and how they align with access to Secretary Clinton. The AP hits back:

AP statement on Clinton Foundation donors

Aug. 24, 2016, by Paul Colford The Associated Press’ reporting relied on publicly available data provided by the State Department about Hillary Clinton’s meetings, phone calls and emails, cross-referenced against donor information provided by the Clinton Foundation and its related charities on its websites. As AP wrote, our reporting was based on Mrs. Clinton’s calendars covering the entirety of her tenure as secretary of state and on more detailed schedules of meetings and phone calls covering roughly half that period. AP first requested Mrs. Clinton’s calendars and schedules in 2010 and again in 2013 but was unsuccessful. AP then sued the State Department in federal court to obtain the schedules it has received so far. AP expects to receive the remaining files before Election Day and will continue to examine them and report on their contents. AP has been transparent in how it has reported this story. It focused on Mrs. Clinton’s meetings and calls involving people outside government who were not federal employees or foreign diplomats, because meeting with U.S. or foreign government officials would inherently have been part of her job as secretary of state. We focused on Mrs. Clinton’s meetings and calls involving those people outside her duties as secretary of state whom she chose to include in her busy schedule. This reporting was done by the same AP investigative team that discovered Mrs. Clinton’s private email server and traced it to her basement in Chappaqua, New York, and whose reporting last week resulted in the resignation of Donald Trump’s top campaign strategist. AP has been examining issues facing the presidential candidates and will continue to do so.