Speeches

A Criminal Hill-Raiser Phony Commodity Options Profit Whitewater Real Estate Development & the Missing Billing Records Pardons and the Riches $100,000 Payment From an Educational Foundation Conspiracy Theories Sources Quotes BACK TO SKELETON CLOSET Quotes:

"Bill is a hard dog to keep on the porch." (Hillary)

"I can tell you with 100% certainty that Norman Hsu is NOT involved in a ponzi scheme. He is COMPLETELY legit." - Samantha Wolf, Hillary's former West Coast Finance Director, June 2007

"I don't have time to stay home and bake cookies." (Hillary)

"I'm not some little woman, standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette." (Hillary, on 60 Minutes). (She later apologized to Wynette, who then campaigned for Bill.)

(to a group of children) "Would you tell your parents something for me? Ask them, if they have a gun in their house, please lock it or take it out of their house. Will you do that as good citizens?" Emails Barack Obama got a nifty Blackberry outfitted with secure encryption, so he could keep up with email as he traveled around. Hillary, who as Secretary of State traveled a lot more than the president, requested one too and was turned down for no reason that anyone can remember.

She was told, no you should use this system of little secure tents we'll set up in foreign embassies when we can. She said basically "Screw you, asshole" and hired a guy to set up her own private email server in her house, which she and a small number of staff used. That's not unusual among people with high level jobs handed cumbersome and unworkable security systems -- they work around them.

The scandal is not clearly spelled out, but in esssence boils down to 3 things:

1) Did she or her staff send classified information over the system?

2) Was she trying to evade the requirement to make all of her work emails public? and

3) Unrelated but lumped in -- embarrassing things found in her campaign's emails.

The Russians hacked the email of some of her staff and have been releasing them through Wikileaks. These emails aren't actually from Hillary's server at all; almost all of them are from the email account of John Podesta, one of her campaign managers, but since the word email comes up when these leaks are discussed, people think of it all as "emails" and lump them together. The FBI looked into all of these emails, tens of thousands of them, and concluded that there were no criminal charges to be brought. This is a complicated and frankly kind of boring scandal, but most of the key information is detailed in the FBI's report -- check it out.

Now, that report was based on the emails that the FBI could read, from the server itself (which Hillary's staff turned over to the FBI) and other sources, such as her staff members who received many of her emails. But Hillary had asked her staff to go through and separate her personal emails and delete them. (Note: she didn't do it herself.) About 30,000 emails were deleted that way. The FBI has found about half of them and didn't find anything bothersome but obviously they would love to check the other 15,000 or so to be sure.

Ten days before the election, FBI director Jim Comey announced that they had found some more emails on a computer belonging to the estranged husband of one of Hillary's top assistants. The aide, Huma Abedin, claims she didn't even know they were there. The FBI is going through them to see if any of the missing emails are in there, but reportedly is unlikely to have any information before the election. There is no indication that anything scandalous is on there, but it's more emails that could be bad. They just have to check. Comey's announcement broke a long-standing Department of Justice policy, followed by Democrats as well as Republicans, not to make any announcements about investigations within 60 days of an election that might infludence it.

A few interesting points about these emails:

1) The classified angle is really separate from the private server. Even if Hillary used a regular state department account, those aren't supposed to have classified information on them either. Secret information is supposed to go only on a completely different, specialized network.

2) The FBI report found some classified information among her emails, but Hillary didn't send it; her aides sent it to her. Also, it was not properly marked as classified; the special heading that secret information is supposed to have was missing. Most of it was changed to be classified later, years later in many cases. A good chunk of it was public information about the drone program which is officially completely top secret. You and I aren't supposed to know about it, and neither are the people who get bombed. And yet, somehow we all do. Some of the classified emails were describing newspaper articles about drone attacks.

3) Of all of the thousands of emails that wikileaks has released, NONE of them are from Hillary's private server. Meanwhile, emails from her Republican predecessor Colin Powell, from Podesta, and from the State Department system she was supposed to use, have all been hacked and leaked. It's possible that her server was hacked too, but as far as we know her computer was the only one NOT hacked.

4) No secretary of state has EVER used the State Department system. Colin Powell used a Hotmail-type account and actually reccommended Hillary do the same, which would have helped her avoid making her emails public. Before him, Condoleeza Rice sent a few emails, and Madeleine Allbright none at all. John Kerry continues to use a private server, and it's not against the rules.

5) The controversy over Comey's last minute pre-election announcement resulted in an explosion of FBI leaks that revealed a bitter bureaucratic struggle. The New York City office of the FBI, has close ties to Trump's close friend Rudolph Giuliani and former NYC FBI bureau chief Jim Kallstrom (now a Fox News pundit and open Trump supporter; he also used to work for Guiliani's law firm). The New York office is openly feuding with FBI higher-ups as well as the Department of Justice officials above them. Basically, the New York office flat out hates Hillary and excuses many scandals concerning Trump; their supervisors think they're chasing worthless allegations and wasting their time. The New York agents think their investigations are being squelched by Obama administration figures for political reasons, though Jim Comey is a Republican.

Comey has justified his decision to announce the new emails find right before the election in part because the news would have been leaked by the New York office if he didn't. The question is, why doesn't he focus on getting his own staff under control so he can do what he wants? In this case, the FBI has it's own scandal. Donald Trump gave $1.2 million dollars to a charity run run by Jim Kallstrom, right before all of the leaks and investigations in the New York office started. Kallstrom has openly discussed how the agents in his former office feel about the Hillary investigations on Fox News, even though it violates department rules for him to discuss current cases with active agents. You have to think he is a very likely suspect for the leaks out of that office, which are also of course illegal. Sources

The Clinton Foundation Details soon. Sources

Giving Speeches for Money Hillary gave a lot of speeches for money. It was totally legal. It's kind of sleazy, because it would be a good way for someone to hand money to a politician, which is why presidents, declared candidates for president, senators and congressman are not allowed to give speeches for money. That said, Hillary was not any of those things, and other presidential candidates did the exact same thing (for example, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, and Donald Trump. Trump actually got $1.5 million each for several speeches about ten years ago.) The amount of money Clinton made was huge for most of us; $225,000 per speech was her standard fee. But it's surprisingly totally standard for a person as famous as she is. And that's the bottom line in the U.S. -- fame. Hell, Paris Hilton got $150,000 just to show up at a nightclub for a party once and she didn't even have to say or do anything. Ironically, if Bernie Sanders quit the Senate tomorrow, he could probably make more than Hillary per speech, and he'd have a lot of takers. Sources

Benghazi Benghazi is a Libyan word that means "Oh my God my Hillary-hating friend is about to bore me for HOURS." More soon. Sources

A Criminal Hill-Raiser Hillary calls her big donors -- the ones who not only donate the maximum, but "bundle" (corral) max donations from dozens of friends, like Bush's Rangers -- her Hill-Raisers. At least one of them is a flat-out criminal.

Norman Hsu was one of Hillary's biggest fundraisers -- raising over $850,000 for her -- right up to the day he surrendered to California State Superior Court on a Grand Theft conviction; he had been a fugitive from justice for 15 years, since he failed to appear for sentencing after pleading no contest. His crime was raising over a million dollars from investors for a business scheme that didn't exist. (Hsu also gave $18,000 to Barack Obama, and $37,000 to Bill Richardson.) After Mr. Hsu's colorful background became public, Clinton's campaign donated his direct contributions -- and later those of the people he bundled -- to charity.)

He has an interesting, if murky background. Hsu graduated from top-notch schools (Berkeley and Wharton Business School), and friends describe him as having a magnetic personality -- friendly, social, and impressive. Hsu tells people he makes his money in New York's garment industry, but key players interviewed there by the Wall Street Journal have never heard of him.

In 1990, police in a San Francisco suburb stopped a speeding Toyota at 3am one night. Inside were Chinatown gang leaders including Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, who said Hsu owed him money, and Norman Hsu himself, who told police he was being kidnapped. (This is not something that happens to random nice people in San Francisco.) The gang leaders were arrested. After he fled his sentencing, Hsu apparently lived in Hong Kong until 1998 -- when he went through a series of bankruptcies there -- before quietly returning to the United States.

He is under investigation for possibly donating illegally high amounts of money to Clinton and others using straw men. For example, his ex-wife, his son (a student), and an entire family, led by a mailman, have all given the federal maximum amount of money -- $4,600 -- to Clinton's campaign, often at nearly the exact time that Hsu gave similar amounts himself.

You have to give Hsu this much -- he's consistent. When his criminal background was made public by the Los Angeles Times, Hsu turned himself in to authorities, posted $2 million bail -- and then skipped town without turning in his passport as required. In the meantime, he Fedexed "suicide notes" to several prominent people he knew. 2 days later he was arrested by the FBI at a hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado. He had flown by charter airplane into Oakland, promising to surrender to a Bay area court, but ducked out and hopped on an Amtrak train heading east to Chicago.

The passengers in the sleeper across the hallway noticed a hat, a book and other items spilling into the hall from under Hsu's door. He didn't answer a knock, but passenger Joanne Segale looked in and saw him bare-chested, in a fetal position wedged against the door. Conductors pried open the door of his cabin with a crowbar and found him wedged into a tight space between his sliding door and his fold-out bed -- the kind of place that someone might try to hide. He was delirious and couldn't answer questions, but at one point asked if he was in jail. Segale, helping him to the bathroom, saw “lots and lots of medication in that room. I could see pills on the floor and rolling around.”

In retrospect, Mr. Hsu may have given an advance hint of his plan to run when his lawyer announced that his $2 million bail "can also be used for restitution to any persons who might still be unpaid" -- as if he were a diner rushing out of a restaurant and dropping some $20 bills on the table to cover the tab. It seems bizarre to post $2 million bail you know you are going to lose, when half of that would pay off everyone you cheated -- unless your $2 million came from shady sources that will soon become known once people investigate you.

At first, it wasn't clear where Hsu got all his money, leading to lots of conspiracy theories. Since his 1998 return to the U.S., Hsu has invested in several apparel businesses that -- all put together -- gross about $2 million per year, according to Dun and Bradstreet. And he has invested in a several Bay Area properties. That's not a bad source of money, but hardly enough to generate the $1.2 million Hsu has been estimated to have donated to various political campaigns, much less his fancy clothes, charter airplane, top Manhattan clubs booked for splashy parties, etc.

No one's sure, but it seems likely that Hsu is simply a garden variety Ponzi-scheme con man. Like many, he found that creating an aura of wealth and success is the fastest way to get new investors to hand over money. And apparently he found that giving campaign donations can get you pictures and parties with famous people cheaper than almost any other method.

One single investor -- Joel Rosenman, one of the entrepreneurs behind the Woodstock Music Festival -- was so taken with Norman Hsu's investments that he created a $40 million investment fund entirely given to 37 bridge loan deals with Norman Hsu, who allegedly was going to manufacture clothes for Gucci, Prada and other designer labels in China and resell them to those labels at a profit. Hsu gained Rosenman's trust by returning 40% on a couple of small, initial investments by Rosenman and his business partner, Ms. Yau Cheng. (She introduced Hsu to Rosenman in 2002.) This is the exact same kind of deal Hsu was convicted for in 1991. Already, checks that Hsu sent to the investment fund have bounced for insufficient funds.

At least one investor warned the Clinton campaign last summer that Hsu might be running a Ponzi scheme, but in their furious rush to raise money, they ignored the caution. On June 18, 2007, an Irvine, CA businessman named Jack Cassidy heard from a friend who invested with Hsu, and emailed a Democratic Party official to warn them. " There is a significant probability that a man using the name of Norman Hsu is running a Ponzi scheme," Irvine wrote. "The math does not work!!"

Samantha Wolf, who was Hillary's West Coast Finance Director, wrote the official saying "I can tell you with 100% certainty that Norman Hsu is NOT involved in a ponzi scheme. He is COMPLETELY legit." She no longer works for the Clinton campaign. Sources

Phony Commodity Options Profit In 1978, with no prior experience, Hillary Clinton started trading high risk commodities futures under the guidance of James Blair, a friend. Blair was also an experienced trader who was outside counsel to massive Arkansas chicken processor Tyson Foods (which had business before Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas.) Hillary did very well, improbably well, even given the fact that a major bull market was going on. One possibility, hinted at by trading records from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is that Blair traded for her and manipulated results to put money in Hillary's pocket. For example, a trader might make a large number of trades in a single day, for themself and for clients. Some of them will do well and some will fail. Instead of allocated the trades between various clients as originally intended, a trader like Blair could reassign all of the successful trades to one client (such as Clinton) and assign the losers to himself, or another client. That way, he would effectively pay her the money without worry about laws against payoffs. Sources

Whitewater and the Missing Billing Records Whitewater was a real estate development in Arkansas that Bill and Hillary lost money in when it went south. Their partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, also owned a savings and loan association (Madison Guaranty) that hired Hillary and her firm, the Rose Law Firm. When the S&L failed, costing taxpayers over $65 million, the Whitewater vacation development collapsed.

The 3 Whitewater special prosecutors, after 6 years and $40 million worth of investigation, concluded that "This office has determined that the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either President or Mrs. Clinton knowingly participated in any criminal conduct ... or knew of such conduct." Hardly a ringing declaration of innocence. Hillary stated 99 times under oath in 1996 that she did not recall what work she did for Madison Guarantee. Kenneth Starr, the second special prosecutor had subpoenaed her billing records from Madison, and she reported that she couldn't find them. Two years later, the records turned up in the White House family residence under circumstances that Hillary has never been able to explain. The records showed that she met 15 times with Arkansas businessman Seth Ward concerning Whitewater, but she and Ward denied rememberin any of that.

At the very best, her actions strongly suggest she was covering something up. At worst, she may have lied under oath and obstructed justice by hiding the billing records. The irony is that this whole episode is amazingly small potatoes. The total money involved from all parties was under $500,000, and the Clinton's lost all but $1,000 of their money. Sources

Pardons and the Riches At the very end of his presidential term, Bill Clinton pardoned a number of people, including financier and convicted tax evader Marc Rich. It's on Hillary's scandal page because a few months earlier, Rich's former wife Denise gave substantial donations to Hillary's senatorial campaign and the Clinton library. While any wife or husband of a politician should be free to run for office, running while the spouse is still in power creates an immediate conflict of interest, and Bill had no trouble repaying the favor to his wife's contributor.

The interesting part of this story is who else was urging Clinton to pardon Marc Rich. The request was delivered to Hillary personally by none other than Scooter Libby, who was Rich's lawyer and has since been convicted of perjury in the Bush administration's leaking of the identity of arms control spy Valerie Plame. And Rich's application was supported by Israel's then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The final twist is that Rich was a suspected middleman in smuggling of Iraqi oil despite the trade embargo. His pardon required him to pay a $100 MILLION FINE before he could return to the U.S. That should give conspiracy folks something to chew on.

Clinton also pardoned Almon Glenn Braswell for mail fraud and perjury convictions. Braswell and Carlos Vignali paid approximately $200,000 each to Hillary's brother, Hugh Rodham, to pitch their clemency casese. Rodham returned the payments after they became public knowledge. Sources

$100,000 payment from an Educational Foundation This is an obscure story we've been following since it came out in 1996, and little has been made public. On January 10th of that year, New York state's then Attorney General Dennis Vacco (a Republican) announced he was investigating $100,000 in payments to Hillary or the Rose Law Firm from the National Center on Education and the Economy, a charity that was in Rochester New York and has since moved to Washington, D.C. The organization is a prime advocate of standards-based education, which has been promoted by both the Clinton and Bush II administrations (in the No Child Left Behind act.)

Hillary was on their board, as were Mario Cuomo and Ira Magaziner (two other prominent Democrats), but no other board members were paid. No one has ever been able to find any details or justification for what Hillary did for that money, other than produce a single 12 page report. When this story came out, Vacco announced he was asking for contracts with Hillary or the Rose Law Firm and a description of any work she actually did. Nothing more has come of it, which -- given how thoroughly Bill and Hillary were investigated - indicates that nothing substantial has turned up, either way. Sources

Tinfoil Hat Conspiracy Theories Bill and Hillary are the biggest magnet for conspiracy theories since, well, the Warren Commission. The interesting twist is that several of these conspiracy ideas -- such as the idea that Bill and/or Hillary actually had White House Counsel Vince Foster killed, despite the coroner's ruling that he committed suicide, were fully investigated by well funded, official government commissions with subpoena power and aggressive, Republican leadership.

The fact that these investigations found nothing to the conspiracies does not stop the conspiracy theories, of course. The 900 page reports just give plenty of details for obsessives to mull over and find intriguing tidbits. Other great conspiracies include: List of Dead Friends of Bill (which will no doubt reappear soon as the list of dead friends of Hillary), Mena Arkansas CIA/smuggling ties, and stories about Hillary being a lesbian, which could actually be kind of hot depending on who she is said to have slept with. Xena/Hillary rough sex? Never mind.

Or take Norman Hsu. Lots of conspiracists on the right are convinced he was a Chinese spy trying to control Hillary with donations. And yes, Bill Clinton got illegal contributions from a Chinese guy (John Huang) who admitted that some of his money came from Chinese military sources. But that doesn't mean every crook with an Asian name is a Chinese spy. The far simpler explanation -- that he's a con man -- just isn't fun enough for these conspiracists. Never mind that Hsu has plead guilty to running one con, that political donations make perfect sense as a relatively cheap way to establish a phony legitimacy by appearing at parties and in photos with well-known public figures, and that at least one (very White and American) investor has admitted giving Hsu $40 million.

The bottom line is, play in these murk pits if you like but don't expect to get anywhere. The classic mark of a conspiracy theorist is that instead of giving you facts and statements, they ask questions. "Did you know that Vince Foster blah blah blah?" "If it WAS suicide, why did blah blah blah?" As soon as you hear arguments like that, about any candidate, realize you've left the realm of knowledge and entered the world of mystery.

As with any conspiracy theory or urban legend, a great place to get a good blast of common sense is the their investigation of the Dead Clinton Friends list, with dates, facts and hotlinks. The report is fair and admits when a death might be questionable.

Sources:



Criminal Hill-Raiser Sources "Hsu Faces Probe of Fund-Raising For Democrats" by Ianthe Jeanne Dugan, Brody Mullins and Jim Carlton, Wall Street Journal, September 1, 2007, pA1

"Democrats Race to Return Cash From Big Donor" By Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Brody Mullins, Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2007, pA1

"Leading Clinton Donor Stays Below the Radar" By Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Brody Mullins, Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2007, pA6

"Ex-Fugitive's Fundraising Talent Put Him on Democrats' A-List" By Matthew Mosk and John Solomon, Washington Post, September 7, 2007; Page A03

"What Made Norman Hsu Run?" By Ianthe Dugan, Jonathan Cheng, and Brody Mullins, Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2007, pA1

"Travelling Man" By Kris Hudson, Wall Street Journal: Washington Wire, September 10, 2007, pA1

"Hsu Sent Suicide Note Before Disappearance" By Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Kris Hudson, Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2007; Page A4

"'60s Figure Says He Financed Donor Hsu: Woodstock Creator Tells DA That Funds Have Gone Missing - A $40 Million Shortfall" By Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Brody Mullins, Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2007; Page A1

"Clinton to cut ties with fundraiser", by Robin Fields, Chuck Neubauer and Dan Morain, Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2007

"Fund-Raiser's Wallet Matched His Need to Please", by Don Van Natta Jr. and Mike McIntire, New York Times, September 16, 2007

"Hsu Case Wide Net For Cliton Donors", by John Solomon and Matthew Mosk, Washington Post, September 16, 2007 pA1

Commodities Profits