06/04/16 – Ken Silverstein – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Ken Silverstein.
He writes for the New York Observer and is a contributing editor to Vice, and he's written several pieces about the Clinton Foundation, including this one for Harper's Magazine's Shaky Foundations.
The Clinton's so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and enrich family friends.
And I think this is the same one that we talked about before half a year ago, Ken, but I don't care because it's important.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you, sir?
I'm good.
Thank you.
Good.
I appreciate you joining us today.
Shaky Foundations, again, at Harper's.org.
And so, yeah, let's get right into money laundering there.
You quote, I believe it's an unnamed expert, as basically reducing the foundation to a money laundering operation, in his words, in this article.
How does he back that up?
Well, I wouldn't say he is an unnamed source, as sometimes is necessary.
It's a former intelligence official who analyzed the foundation.
I wouldn't say he reduced it to a money laundering operation.
It's much more than that.
It's worse than that because it's a money laundering operation.
It's a vehicle to enrich cronies.
It's a vehicle to promote the Clinton family brand with a lot of very dubious good works.
And in my view, it's a manner to contribute to Hillary Clinton's political campaigns, going back to her Senate campaign.
But in terms of money laundering, the Clinton Foundation has a partnership with a very sleazy Canadian businessman, really like a Canadian Bernie Madoff, named Frank Giustra.
They have various partnerships with Giustra.
He's said to be the biggest individual donor to the Clinton Foundation.
And many of his donations have followed trips with Bill Clinton, where Bill Clinton did favors for him and helped him obtain concessions and various interests overseas, in Kazakhstan and Colombia, for example.
But Giustra has a Canadian charity called the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership.
And basically, it allows people to donate anonymously, not everyone, and they under pressure started to reveal some of their donors, but a lot of their donors are still secret.
You can donate to this enterprise in Canada.
And then this enterprise, the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, sends money to the Clinton Foundation, just under the name of the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership.
So nobody really knows where this money is coming from.
Say you're some sleaze, crooked businessman or dictator or government that doesn't want the public to know that you're contributing to the Clinton Foundation, and it would be embarrassing for the Clinton Foundation to acknowledge receiving money from certain entities or governments or individuals.
So what you could do, and we don't know for sure because the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership refuses to release all the relevant information, but certainly what you could do is contribute to that Canadian entity anonymously, and then with instructions that the money be forwarded on to the Clinton Foundation in the United States.
And I'm quite sure that that's happened.
I've been told that's happened by various people.
You can't get either the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership to talk about it, which is curious.
But it's just, you know, it's obviously just a recipe for hiding contributions.
And the foundation, the Clinton Foundation, to me, it's, you know, obviously it's an influence peddling operation.
Obviously the Clintons are terribly grateful for money you give to the Clinton Foundation.
You know, there are limits on what you can just give politically.
So there are a variety of ways that people have found to get around those campaign finance rules, which have been gutted by the Supreme Court as well as everyone knows.
But this is just one other way for people to give money, you know.
And they can say, oh, it's just to help the charitable enterprises of the Clinton Foundation.
And then we can talk about that a little bit too.
But you know, look, I constantly hear from liberal types and Hillary supporters when you criticize the foundation, you know, it's like, they're not familiar with it.
They don't know what it's doing, which is, and I am directly familiar with some of its activity.
It's not a terribly inspiring picture.
But think about it.
You know, if Donald Trump had a family foundation, and he does, but in his case, it's just, it shows how cheap he is.
He barely gives any money at all.
But let's say he was collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in a family foundation and he becomes president and he appoints Melania as secretary of state.
I mean, would people look askance at that?
Would you go, hmm, I wonder if that's a problem?
You know, and we're going to take money in from some secret donors and foreign governments, which they lied about.
They initially said they weren't going to take foreign money.
I mean, this is just self-evidently a problem.
If you're not in the tank for Hillary Clinton, you can see that this is a problem.
You know, it would be a problem if it was Donald Trump.
It would be a problem if it was Bernie Sanders.
It would be a problem if it was George W. Bush.
You know, let's just treat this as a situation.
Let's treat it equally.
Let's look at this as, you know, generically, you know, having a enormous foundation where you have a secretary of state affiliated with it in this way, where it's part of the family foundation.
Now, it's pretty much a no brainer that it's a problem.
You don't have to agree with my entire analysis, but, you know, think about it.
Donald Trump and Melania's secretary of state, no problem, right?
I wouldn't hear someone defend that.
It's a pretty, it's a pretty close parallel.
It's not exactly precise, but it would raise problems for everyone.
Well, and so this is the thing, too, is even if you don't want to take the most cynical view of it, you can, as you're saying, see how problematic it is, just the structure of having a foundation and having Hillary be the secretary of state.
But then, boy, when you elaborate in this article, I mean, it really gets, well, interesting, Ken, you talk about Equatorial Guinea sending money.
That's the context of the money laundering quote there.
Equatorial Guinea has to kick down money to this Canadian group, and that's how the money gets to the Clintons.
Now, what interest in the world could the leadership of the government of Equatorial Guinea have in bribing, not just kowtowing to the American government and to the secretary of state and her policies, but to the secretary of state personally and her foundation and and paying her what looks on the surface as, you know, some kind of, you know, basically bribe money directly to her, like kicking up to, you know, got to kick up to Polly and stay on his good side if this is the good fellas.
Right.
Otherwise, is there a particular interest in Equatorial Guinea that the State Department was messing around with right at that time that explains it?
Or how does that work?
What why would they want to?
Well, first off, you know, I'd ask another question.
Why would Equatorial Guinea donate money to a Canadian foundation that was going to be passed on to the Clinton Foundation instead of doing it directly?
And my response would be probably because it's too embarrassing for the Clintons to publicly take that money.
And by the way, I asked them specifically about this contribution, which I cite to a money laundering expert and former intelligence officer, the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton-Dewster Enterprise Partnership, and they don't deny it.
So, you know, I would think that they would just flat out, if this was false, they would just flat out deny it.
But look, Equatorial Guinea is one of the worst, you know, the government there is one of the worst in the world.
The president has president.
I mean, I can't believe I'm actually using that word.
The dictator has been in power since 1979.
He wins reelection every so often with 99 percent of the vote.
They have a lot of interest in Washington.
They've paid lobbyists.
They've, you know, done all sorts of things to win influence in Washington under the Clintons, under the Obamas, and prior to that, under various governments.
Because, you know, there are American oil companies who have big investments over there.
They've lobbied on behalf of Equatorial Guinea.
They don't want to risk somebody, you know, a president saying, hey, do we really, really actually have to have a friendly relationship with Equatorial Guinea?
The guy's a dictator.
He's been saying he's going to hold honest elections for 30 years or so.
He's obviously never going to do it.
And he, you know, he doesn't want, I mean, the dictator, Obiang, doesn't want pressure.
He doesn't want any problems in Washington.
You know, he gives money to the Clinton Foundation for the same reason he hires Washington lobbyists, to stay out of trouble.
So that, you know, if maybe somebody in Congress, every once in a while this happens, people, somebody in Congress will say, what is going on?
This guy is a rotten, bottom feeder dictator.
Do we really need to be sucking up to him?
So this is just another way to, you know, stay out of trouble.
And Hillary Clinton was secretary.
I actually, I don't think anything specific was happening at that time.
But they've had lobbyists in Washington for over a decade.
This is just part of an influence peddling operation.
The foundation is another way to do it.
You know, Hillary was secretary of state.
Am I right, though, that this seems a little bit beyond the pale compared to business as usual, right?
You didn't have people directly bribing Colin Powell.
They just sucked up to the Bush administration, the Bush government, right?
I think it's something new and, and different.
And it's, you know, it's, it's, well, it's, it's, it's Washington.
There's been this slow, steady, and then sudden deterioration of any rules governing campaign finance to the point that, you know, it's basically a free for all.
I mean, the idea, I think anybody who's watched this pathetic political, the primary campaign, and watched, you know, embarrassments like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton emerge as both as the almost certain nominees, you know, for the United States and, you know, under this ridiculous system with our caucuses and primaries and the superdelegates, I mean, the United States has no credibility to preach democracy abroad at all.
I mean, Yeah, could you please elaborate because we hear a little bit of this from time to time, but we very hear of much substance about the bribes and the quid pro quo from the Saudis and the Qataris and the other Gulf states for these massive arms deals.
And, you know, this goes back to what you're saying about the double standard here, where if this was Trump, we were talking about, holy crap, what a scandal this would be, but it just, people just shrug, I guess, because it's just part of being a Clinton that that's the way business is, or because her political opposition and Bernie Sanders has not gone after her on the issue.
And so therefore it's just not an issue for whatever reason, this huge one is getting shoved under the rug.
And yeah, it seems like the arms deals to the Gulf states would be the biggest part of the scandal, no?
It's just so many different parts, but yeah, it is a huge double standard.
And Sanders finally is talking about it.
I mean, I don't know what took him so long.
He's finally started talking about this crooked foundation.
But yeah, there's a total double standard.
I mean, if this was, look, Trump, I looked into Trump's foundation.
I wrote a piece about it for Vice.
And frankly, I didn't find much other than certain things that were amusing, and, you know, show that, I mean, he was donating money, basically.
He was using other people's money instead of his own.
You know, he hasn't given money in years and years to his own foundation.
The guy claims to be a billionaire and yet he's incredibly cheap.
He gave variety, donations to a variety of strange causes, on and on and on.
But we're talking about a tiny little foundation that, whatever you think of it, it shows how cheap he is, but it doesn't show he's corrupt.
I mean, I think there are other things you'd go after in terms of pointing to Donald Trump and corruption.
I mean, the guy's a real estate developer in Queens.
Give me a break.
I mean, he did not make money only the good old fashioned way of honesty and hard work.
That's obvious.
But yeah, if this was Trump, if this was the Trump foundation, people would be going crazy.
You know, and in terms of the arms deals, I haven't written about that specifically, but, you know, this is just one way, I mean, countries that bought, as I recall, countries that bought large amounts of weapons from the United States were donating to the Clinton foundation.
I mean, to me, that's, it's just, that's the sort of thing that can happen if you allow this foundation operating.
The blame really goes to Obama.
I mean, when he picked her as secretary of state, the Clinton foundation signed a memorandum of understanding, agreed to by the, the Clinton foundation and the Obama administration worked out a deal.
And as I recall, Doug Bann, this sleazy guy who runs this consulting firm, Tenio, who all he does is trade on the Clinton family name.
I mean, he's a total underachieving mediocrity who got rich, you know, he was a top aide to, to Bill Clinton.
But Doug Bann negotiated on behalf of the Clinton foundation.
And I think was Cheryl Mills, another highly dubious character who negotiated on behalf of the Obama administration.
I could be wrong about that.
It's, I think it's in this story though.
But the Obama administration signed this memorandum of understanding and let them get away with this.
But, you know, why, like, how do you say we're going to have a secretary of state who's involved in hugely?
She was a trustee at one point.
I think, I can't remember.
I think well into her term as secretary of state.
So again, please read my article because it's been a, it's a six month old story.
But, you know, how do you even allow this to happen?
You know, well, I mean, Obama, he donated part of his Nobel prize winnings to the Clinton foundation's relief efforts in Haiti.
And if anybody's followed that story, talk about a fraud.
So, you know, I mean, Obama won, for whatever reason, who will, we will probably never know what Obama was thinking and why he decided to pick Hillary.
I would love to know what the thinking was there, but then to allow- Keep your enemies closer.
That's what it was.
Actually, I have an even more cynical interpretation than that.
I think that, well, that, that's, yeah, that's partly it, but I just wonder what sort of information that, who knows?
You know what?
Nevermind.
Cause it's all speculation.
I honestly don't know.
I just, I can't understand why he would have, picking her I understand.
She was well known.
She was, you know, she had come in second in the campaign.
There's a logic to that.
Yeah.
Rahm Emanuel thought it would be nice to not have her in the Senate as an antagonist, but instead to bring her in.
That makes sense.
There are plenty of explanations, but allowing her to operate, you know, allowing this deal with the foundation, that was unforgivable.
It was an open door to conflicts of interest and influence peddling with foreign governments.
So I, that is a mystery.
Now here's something that was interesting that your source said in the article too, was that all you have to do is follow the pattern of speeches where Clinton, where Bill Clinton, the former president, the husband goes and gives a speech, collects some money, and then a certain amount of time later, the secretary of state shows up with some policy changes, just like they wanted.
And how this happened over and over again.
I wonder if you checked that, that might even be a fun little infographic about, you know, demonstrating the pattern there.
Did you kind of verify his statement about that?
I have checked into a few examples and some of these have been published.
And I'm also working on a big story that I really don't want to get into that involves one of these cases.
But I mean, you can see in Columbia, for example, when they're, you know, Clinton is down there getting paid huge amounts at exactly the same time that Hillary Clinton is in Columbia sucking up to Alvaro Arriba, who arguably is the worst, most vicious president in modern Latin American history, which says a lot.
Hillary was down there sucking up to Arriba, Bill was down there with his Canadian businessmen, Frank Giussara, helping him broaden his interests in Columbia, but there are other cases that match up and what's shocking to me is that, you know, where is the FBI?
I mean, look, I'm a journalist.
Oh man, I was going to ask you that in a minute, but go ahead and interview yourself, Ken.
Where the hell's the FBI?
Well, this is the thing.
I don't have the resources to do this.
Or, you know, I mean, journalism, if Scott, you would like to support me for the next few months, I'd love to have a go at it, but, you know, I'm sure you're in the same boat I am.
We have resource limitations, you know, there are only so many hours in the day and I'm not funded to do that sort of research and I don't have subpoena power or, you know, I mean, the FBI...
You do have Jason Leopold over there at VICE.
You guys might make a hell of a team on this.
Well, I would love to do that work with him on this, but yeah, I mean, it's a, you know, with the proper resources, one could, I think, unravel this thing.
But, you know, the interesting thing is going to be to see what happens with the FBI investigation, because they have to be able to unravel this.
And it's really, it's not even a question of unraveling.
Well, and is it an investigation?
It's a preliminary one or it's nothing or what is it?
I think it's a very active investigation.
And, you know, there's a State Department investigation on the one component and FBI investigation.
I mean, there's no way they're not looking at this.
It's a question of political will.
I mean, they're going to have to announce at some point we're doing something or we're not doing something.
I don't think that, I mean, one thing that's will be really interesting is to see what James Comey does, the head of the FBI, because, you know, does he want to go down in history as the man who whitewashed Hillary Clinton's wrongdoing?
Of course.
That's a big question.
I hope he does.
That's what the FBI is for, whitewashing the Clintons and vice versa, too, by the way.
Yeah, that's true.
So, all right.
Now, let me ask you one more of these, just because I want to leave everybody pissed off at the end of the interview.
What's this about fraud and money for AIDS medicine in Africa, Ken?
Well, I mean, the Clinton Foundation has, you know, one of its big boasting points is how much they've done to fight AIDS.
And all I can tell you is, and that's, I think that's in another, actually, that's in a different story, right?
No, it's in the same one.
Shaky Foundations.
Oh, I, well, okay.
Well, I've written a few stories.
One focused on that.
And if you just search for my name and, unfortunately, AIDS and Clinton Foundation, you'll find a more detailed story, but, you know, they, they took in a lot more money than they spent.
They have achieved very, you know, it's all market-driven solutions.
They're, I mean, if you look behind the Clinton Foundation, you know, they make money in a lot of cases on their so-called relief efforts or their charitable efforts.
And in terms of AIDS, I just know they collected way more than they spent.
And their effort was headed by Ira Magaziner, former Clinton, you know, basically known for the catastrophic 1993 healthcare disaster, healthcare quote reform, who ran it out of his own, the Clinton Foundation's AIDS effort, out of his own private consulting firm.
And he was getting paid to do it.
I mean, the Clinton Foundation is successful.
I mean, you just scratched the surface.
And this is why the FBI doesn't even have to look at, you know, matching up every single speaking engagement of bills with a trip by Hillary.
I mean, there's so much low-hanging fruit here.
Yeah.
Well, now what about Congress too?
You mentioned the Benghazi committee was looking into this some, although, boy, that's a stupid name for a committee to look into anything.
But is there any progress there?
Any, you know, at least documents released by them or anything like that?
Well, to be honest, I haven't, you know, there really is a lot of good information that's come out of this committee, but you know, the name scares people away and this is a big problem with the Clintons in general is that there's a lot of right-wing nuts who go after the Clintons and sometimes on good grounds, solid grounds.
I mean, I don't want to, you know.
Even the Benghazi thing is a thing.
It's just the way that they accuse about it makes a parody out of them, despite the actual weight of whatever it is.
Yeah.
It detracts from the real charges and that happens a lot, unfortunately.
And, but, you know, part of the blame is that on the liberal side, you know, and the media side, people don't want to take these issues up.
It's hard to get, I mean, Harper's is, you know, pretty eclectic and Harper's will publish anything.
That's a great thing about Harper's is that it doesn't have political quote standards, meaning that they'll run something, whether it's critical of Trump or Hillary or anybody, or Bernie, I'm sure for that matter.
But there aren't a lot of outlets that do that.
And so I think part of the problem is that, you know, you've got the right-wing media going after this.
And sometimes really in ways you, you look at the outlet and you might go, Oh, Fox News, it's a pile of junk.
You know, you have to read the stories.
Some of the stories by Fox have been really good.
You know, people like every, people want to just dismiss Fox.
It's all junk.
It's not.
Read the individual stories.
It's like anything else.
You can't dismiss it and just say, Oh, it's Fox News or pick your other, you know, most hated right-wing outlet.
I mean, some of them, you know, are, you know, a lot of it is pure junk.
Um, uh, but there are some really good stories that have been done in the conservative media.
And I shouldn't say a lot of it is pure junk.
I don't really know.
There are some stories that I think can never be proven.
And so I don't pay attention to them, but there are a lot of charges that seem pretty outrageous.
In some ways you might go, Oh my God, it's just right-wing, you know, the right-wing attack machine.
You know, which that term was created by David Brock, who's now part of the Clinton attack machine.
Um, and it's about as dishonest as one could possibly get.
I mean, God, professional liar.
Um, but you've got to read the stories.
If you're going to dismiss stories about the Clinton Foundation or Bill Clinton and being a sexual predator.
And it's another one where people go, Oh, come on that, you know, like that's getting carried away.
He is a sexual predator.
I mean, it's pretty obvious, like it's a mystery to me.
Well, what happened was, uh, and you'll remember that NBC news held the Juanita Broderick interview until one week, maybe two after Bill Clinton's acquittal in the Senate, right.
When not one out of 300 million Americans wanted to hear another Clinton sex scandal whatsoever.
And he refused to comment on it.
And Sam Donaldson was the only one who pressed him on it for a minute.
And then that was it.
And the story just died and no one even never heard of Juanita Broderick.
They only think of Paula Jones who, you know, he was rude to her, but she didn't really have a case.
And the Lewinsky thing, well, she was, it was consensual at least.
So what are you talking about?
Rape?
What do you mean?
Nobody ever heard of Juanita Broderick.
If they ever had to give her story a fair shake, that would be a whole different story, but unfortunately that was the way it got buried.
All right.
Well, thanks very much.
I really appreciate your time, Ken.
All right.
So that is Ken Silverstein.
And, uh, he's at the New York Observer and is a contributing editor to Vice.
And thanks y'all for listening.
Scott Horton.org for the archives, sign up for the podcast feed there.
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