Bill Clinton welcomes Laura Bush to the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative to promote “clean water” agreement (credit: White House/Wikimedia Commons)

I began researching the Clinton Foundation in May, 2016. The first of a series of articles, most written prior to detailed revelations found in Wikileaks’ Podesta emails, was published in July, 2016.

This article links to all of them with a brief description. It tells a story in and of itself, I realize. The Foundation is a perfect “fit” with some of the news reporters and pundits we’ve learned about since Bernie Sanders ran for President and so many ugly truths came out of Wikileaks. A lot of information in the articles is highly incriminating to the Clinton Foundation — because they do few “charitable” activities of public benefit and receive and spend large sums of money on salaries, travel and huge celebrity-studded galas. They are at-best, careless in their adherence to normal organizational rules, charitable law, and quaint ideas like contract deliverables and measurable outcomes.

At first, I was frightened to write anything about the Foundation, even though I was shocked by what I was seeing — gross incompetence was the most positive explanation for the extreme inconsistencies in their financial reports and public information. It was obvious the nonprofit community wasn’t commenting on the Foundation’s suspicious business model and dubious outcomes because some were completely uncritical Clinton boosters, and others feared retribution or losing money from large private foundations, the numerous big companies that donated to Clinton Foundation, or federal or state government agencies.

But I kept going. One of the best moments of the series occurred when the Wikileaks Podesta emails were published and each successive group provided new confirmation that what I’d determined independently was true — and then some.

Sailing on the River Denial with Clinton Foundation and Friends (July 9 2016). Wide-ranging, contains description of my work methods and the first shocking thing I saw in May: Clinton Foundation was falsely claiming it did health work in the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area.

Clinton Foundation World Class Slacktivists (July 13 2016). Describes how businesses establish insignificant or useless charity campaigns to drive slacktivist ad clicks or “brand awareness” and how the Clinton Global Initiative is Kingpin in that world. Features Palantir (commercial “big data” enterprise owned by Peter Thiel) report on a “decade of Clinton Global Initiative commitments”. This is the most incomprehensible “report” on outcomes I’ve ever seen.

This is just the start. It gets better!

Clinton Foundation and an Unhealthier Generation (July 17 2016) Covers the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a separate organization with a separate board, office and staff located in Portland, Oregon to which Clinton Foundation donates about $2 million a year. Clinton Foundation freely claims activities of the Alliance as its own in its website, publicity materials, tax returns and in social media publicity. The Alliance’s own outcomes are dubious and questionable. The “advantage” to Clinton Foundation (there is little to the Alliance) is that Clinton Foundation freely accepts and actively solicits big contributions from corporate foodchain giants like Pepsi, Monsanto and Coke. It “passes through” the $2 million or so to the Alliance each year and pockets the rest.

Healthy foods and children’s health are two of my big priorities and I admit, I was most-enraged about this scam — basically telling America they were helping children’s health when in reality, they were just making the kids fat, sick and nearly dead. I contacted Mother Jones about this as they had featured many articles about the abuses of toxic corporate food, particularly HFCS soda manufacturers. I laughed when they blew me off, because they were so eager to promote these companies’ BFFs, the Clintons. Now I just wish Mother Jones would go out of business. Private citizens and employees familiar with other scams (hearing aids, Haiti land grabs, golf extravaganzas in Florida) began to contact me after this article was published.

Clinton Foundation Clampdown: Destroying the World’s Motivation (July 19 2016) Covers the Haiti Coffee Academy scam. The “Academy” is used only by “partner” La Colombe Torrefaction, a NY-based gourmet coffee roaster owned by reality TV star Todd Carmichael. Details the “contributions” received by Clinton Foundation from Carmichael and a charitable trust that are the same amount as the funds used to purchase the property in Haiti. This is the word, let’s see — how did the Washington Post fact checker refer to it? — oh, that’s right. An “arcane” legal term: Inurement. Otherwise known as fraud.

Bill Clinton’s $300 Million Birthday Gift (August 12 2016) Adds up and analyzes expense categories from Foundation’s annual report to derive a figure of $300 million available for Clinton’s birthday. The Foundation was actively fundraising using his birthday at that time.

Clinton Foundation Grade D-: Close All Branches Now (August 21 2016) The surrogates had come out and were talking about how great the Foundation was and how much great work they had done. A flurry of “fact checking” articles had determined how great the Foundation was. This debunks them based on tax returns and annual reports. Features the Federal audit information uncovered by cross-referencing government databases and the Foundation’s EIN. Foundation employees and the Clintons typically told reporters they received no, or minimal, U.S. government grants (a Boston Globe reporter was told they had received “less than $700,000” — an amount insufficient to trigger Federal program audit requirements). This article shows how many government grants they’d received, and documents their verified program audit violations, all kept from the public for years (except for these articles).

Dear Donna Shalala: Real $300 Million a Year Charities Don’t Need to Constantly Cite Charity Watch ‘A’ Ratings (August 26 2016) Self-explanatory. Features photo of Shalala and Chelsea Clinton standing in sketchy-looking doorway in Haiti, in front of hand-painted, jerry-rigged Clinton Foundation sign.

Putting the Clinton Foundation in Context: Corruption Plain on the Face of It (August 27 2016) The Upton Sinclair version of what I’d learned to that date. I had seen a message board link where an ‘expert’ declared I knew nothing about international charities. That combined with the avalanche of “Clinton Foundation Rated A+++ by Charity Whazbo!” torqued me off. Righteous anger, documents their international depredations and frauds.

Charity Watch and Clinton Foundation (August 29 2016). Puts the 6-employee, $600K a year home-based business Charity Watch in the place where it put itself: if not reformed, soon to be out of business. Shows how its board members, a small group which hadn’t changed for years, were connected to top Clinton Foundation corporate donors.

Charity Navigator Rates Clinton Foundation 4 Stars: Every Other U.S. Charity and Donor No Longer Needs to Bother (September 1 2016). Details the sorry decline of formerly-respected (now that I look back, not so much respected as feared) Charity Navigator evaluation organization. This organization broke its own rules to rate the Foundation highly and neglected to notice the reason the Foundation had re-filed its tax returns was it had not noted more than $400 million in foreign government donations — the originals said “no government grants” or zero on that tax line. Hard to see how something like that adds up to a 4-star rating. Both these great evaluatory groups failed to notice that Clinton Foundation’s tax forms and “Audited” Financial statements allocated expenses on a straight, undeviating mathematical formula for years (10% Administration, etc.).

Clinton Foundation: Making America’s Richest Kids Healthier (October 1 2016). Covers the Foundation’s idea of great PR: publicizing its award to a U.S. government-designed health program provided at a public school in one of Southern California’s richest beach communities. Includes the way the Foundation falsely presents the separate Alliance for a Healthier Generation as something the Foundation does, rather than one of the few (less than 10 a year on average ) direct grantees for its funds.

Clinton Foundation: Inurement (October 5 2016). Explains the nonprofit corporate legal term “inurement” which the Washington Post thought was too “arcane” for readers to understand. At this point, I was enjoying the Foundation’s efforts at PR. Since the 100+ management and administrative staff members in Harlem don’t seem to do too much, their reports, blogs and other information are laughably inconsistent. “They make s**t up as they go along.” This time they said they were planting limes in Haiti as part of their Haiti revitalization efforts, a report easily shown to be completely made-up. It turned out this was released within a couple of hours of an article in the Wall Street Journal about suspicious interaction involving the Foundation in the Haiti lime trade. Because I am who I am — I had separately uncovered the inurement deal benefiting the Swiss fragrance firm Firmenich, which paid Bill Clinton a speaking fee in the exact amount “donated” to the Firmenich Foundation that year (documented in article). It was all about a big price increase in lime oil from Mexico and the Swiss firm’s attempt to get exclusive control of Haiti’s formerly thriving lime industry.

Clinton Foundation: We Need to be More Like the Man Called Ove (October 11 2016). We had just gone to see the wonderful Swedish film A Man Called Ove, and I was starting to feel really sick about the soul-dead, dishonest, fake world of the Clintons. Documents celebrity charity-whoredom and the Clinton Global Initiative’s high-priced events.

Clinton Foundation: Malawi Disinformation (October 17 2016) Documents the fake for-profit farming company in Malawi. This is one of many shell companies related to the Clinton Foundation. It’s not “catalyzing” farmers. It’s very likely just taking land away and is the site of mineral or fossil fuel resources. Has a comment from Africa’s version of a “Correct the Record” troll.

Clinton Foundation: Three Decades of ‘Winning’ Have Cost Us Incalculably (October 26 2016). Written using a variety of management memos and communication obtained through Wikileaks’ Podesta emails. I accessed over 300 original management communications, including the original Simpson-Thacher 10-year review of the Foundation, year-end pay raise tallies and sheets documenting that executives got 10–20% raises and “regular” employees earning less than $12 an hour, 1–2% if that, and dozens of bi-weekly “reports to WJC” that showed employees were as careless and hasty in their reports to the Clintons about programs as the Clintons were to the public about what the Foundation accomplished.

The famous “White People Drink Water” photo (Proctor & Gamble paid Clintons — this is their contribution to the world’s clean water)

I had begun to wonder, because the abuse was so global, what would happen when countries like Haiti, Malawi and India got strong enough to challenge our country and take back some of the resources that had been stolen from them? Not to mention the loss of pride of work in legitimate charitable ventures, and the waste of so many hundreds of millions of charitable dollars.

And finally Last Word on Clinton Foundation (January 4 2017). I so hope.