by WorldTribune Staff, October 23, 2016

Hillary Clinton allowed a $12 million pay-for-play scheme between Morocco’s government and the Clinton Foundation to go forward despite the “mess” it might cause her presidential campaign, newly leaked emails show.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI approved the $12 million payout to the Clinton Foundation, provided that it held a convention in his country in May 2015 with Hillary Clinton as the keynote speaker.

Clinton, however, realized that the conference, which was to take place a month after she announced her candidacy, would hurt her campaign, an Oct. 22 report by the New York Post said. The former secretary of state sent Bill and Chelsea Clinton to the lucrative conference.

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) “wasn’t pushing for a meeting in Morocco and it wasn’t their first choice,” Clinton aide Huma Abedin wrote in an email to campaign leaders Robby Mook and John Podesta. “This was HRC’s idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed approx $12 million both for the [foundation’s] endowment and to support the meeting.

“It will break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months,” Abedin continued. “She created this mess and she knows it.”

According to the Post’s report: “It was unclear exactly how much went directly for the summit and how much went to the Clinton Foundation — but the total added up to $12 million.”

The meeting was officially paid for by OCP, a Moroccan government-owned mining company that has been accused of human rights violations.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was a staunch supporter of Moroccan government interests. During her tenure, the U.S.-financed Export-Import Bank also gave OCP a $92 million loan guarantee, the Daily Caller reported.

Human rights advocates have called OCP’s mined phosphates “blood phosphates” — similar to the term “blood diamonds,” referring to precious stones mined in war zones and/or used to finance deadly conflicts.

Mohamed Yeslem Beisat, the Washington envoy for the self-described “government in exile” Polisario Front, told Al-Monitor in 2013 that Morocco was “doing this because they know Hillary has some chances of being president of the United States. And they want her to support their brutal occupation of Western Sahara.”