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View Full Version : Bill Clinton aides used tax dollars to subsidize foundation, private email support




Suzanimal
09-01-2016, 09:53 AM
H/T Against Crony Capitalism (http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/09/bill-clinton-used-tax-dollars-to-subsidize-foundation-private-email-server/)

Welfare queens...


Bill Clinton's staff used a decades-old federal government program, originally created to keep former presidents out of the poorhouse, to subsidize his family’s foundation and an associated business, and to support his wife’s private email server, a POLITICO investigation has found.

Taxpayer cash was used to buy IT equipment — including servers — housed at the Clinton Foundation, and also to supplement the pay and benefits of several aides now at the center of the email and cash-for-access scandals dogging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

This investigation, which is based on records obtained from the General Services Administration through the Freedom of Information Act, does not reveal anything illegal. But it does offer fresh evidence of how the Clintons blurred the line between their non-profit foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the business dealings of Bill Clinton and the couple’s aides.

The thousands of pages of newly uncovered records reveal sometimes granular detail about how Bill Clinton’s representatives directed the spending of taxpayer cash allocated by the GSA under the Former President’s Act.

The Act authorizes the GSA to fund the pensions, correspondence, support staff and travel of ex-presidents. It was passed in 1958 to “maintain the dignity” of the presidency by helping former commanders in chief avoid hard times like those that befell Harry S. Truman. He complained that, without help from Uncle Sam, he would be forced to “go ahead with some contracts to keep ahead of the hounds.”

The Clintons did not have this problem.

But even as the Clintons got rich and grew their foundation into a $2 billion organization credited with major victories in the fights against childhood obesity and AIDS — while paying six figure salaries to top aides — Bill Clinton continued drawing more cash from the Former President's Act than any other ex-president, according to a POLITICO analysis. The analysis also found that Clintons’ representatives, between 2001, when the Clintons left the White House, and the end of this year, had requested allocations under the Act totaling $16 million. That’s more than any of the other living former presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush — requested during that span.

The program supplemented the income of Clinton’s staff, while providing them with coveted federal government benefits, alleviating the need for the Clinton Foundation or other Clinton-linked entities to foot the bill for such benefits. Similarly, Clinton aides got the GSA to pay for computer technology used partly by the foundation.

An analysis of the records provided by GSA, combined with Clinton Foundation tax returns, found that at least 13 of the 22 staffers who have been paid by GSA to work for Clinton’s personal office also worked for the Clinton Foundation.

A Clinton aide said his boss’s use of the GSA program is entirely consistent with the Former Presidents Act.

Generally, the aide explained that Clinton “wears several hats — among them being former President of the United States and the founder of the Clinton Foundation. His staffing reflects those roles.”

The aide added “there is no legal prohibition that would preclude the former president’s staff from receiving compensation from other sources or doing personal work for the former presidents. We are unaware of any legal prohibition that would preclude these activities.”

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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/bill-clinton-used-tax-dollars-to-subsidize-foundation-private-email-support-teneo-227613#ixzz4J1IQk2Xw

euphemia
09-01-2016, 10:06 AM
Precisely. And I suppose in some ways, the Clintons think everyone can become rich from government. That would explain the politics they spew.

timosman
09-01-2016, 10:14 AM
Precisely. And I suppose in some ways, the Clintons think everyone can become rich from government. That would explain the politics they spew.

It is a dog-eat-dog world baby. :cool:

AZJoe
09-01-2016, 10:53 AM
Is there no end to the levels of sleaze and corruption.

https://www.peoplespunditdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Chelsea-Hillary-Bill-Clinton-money.jpg