Ned Ryun: Why are there no consequences for Clinton Foundation abuses?

Whistleblowers Claim Illegal Activity at Clinton Foundation

Last week news broke that whistleblowers on the Clinton Foundation had come forward over a year ago regarding potential abuses, including “quid pro quo” behavior, “conflicts of interest” and the paying of personal business with Foundation funds. Some former federal investigators have even said there is strong evidence of potential criminality.

There have always been questions about the Clinton Foundation's actual purpose and behavior over the years. Of course we can’t forget the Uranium One situation during the Obama years in which, while Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) board approved giving Russia the rights to 20 percent of our uranium and then magically, $145 million shows up in the Clinton Foundation from interests with ties to Uranium One.

What is not as well known is that there were other concerning business transactions while Hillary was Secretary of State: between 2010 and 2012, Hillary Clinton's State Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to nearly two dozen foreign countries, whose governments had conveniently given anywhere from $54 to $141 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Now, commercial arms sales to foreign countries happen all the time. What’s unusual about the size of the sales Hillary approved in that two year period is that they represented nearly “double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.”

In what also gives the appearance of the Clinton Foundation being a slush fund, a 2014 consolidated audit shows that the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Health Access Initiative and other Clinton Foundation programs in 2013 received iin contributions, grants and other revenue $294,741,157, claiming $351,555,126 in total net assets. It also claimed that it had spent 88 percent on programs that year when in reality just under $9 million went to direct charitable grants. As Sean Davis at The Federalist wrote: “The amount it spent on charitable grants–$8.8 million–was dwarfed by the $17.2 million it cumulatively spent on travel, rent, and office supplies.”

For the future of our republic – for the future of the rule of law – there have to be consequences for the Clintons’ actions or we will just see more of the same behavior in the future from our “public servants."

Fairly or unfairly, if you were to look at the sum total of monies brought in that year by the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Health Access Initiative and the other programs, the amount that actually went out the door in direct charitable contributions appears to be precisely 2.98 percent.

And what I and others have noted is that once Hillary had lost the 2016 presidential race, donations to the Foundation plummeted to around $26 million in 2017. Clearly those donors who had given before, when there was influence to be gained by strategic contributions, have decided that if there is no game to play, why pay?

For many of those who have followed the suspect behavior of the Clinton foundation over the years, the biggest question about it is not whether it was a vehicle for influence peddling or pay to play. It’s patently obvious to anyone with objectivity and common sense than it was.

The real question is what are we going to do about it? What do we really believe, as a nation, as a people? Do we believe that some institutions or individuals are too big to fail? Do we believe that there is rule of law and all stand equal before it? Or are we just going to accept a bifurcated legal system where for some the law is more a series of suggestions.

I would argue that the Clinton Foundation is one of the biggest charity frauds and people go to jail for charity fraud: former Republican Congressmen Steve Stockman was just convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for $1 million in charity fraud, and former Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown in December of 2017 was sentenced to five years in federal prison for the same. It must be galling to the intersectionality-obsessed progressive left that a black Congresswoman get five years for charity fraud while the Clintons are still skating free.

For the future of our republic – for the future of the rule of law – there have to be consequences for the Clintons’ actions or we will just see more of the same behavior in the future from our “public servants." If that happens, well then rule of law is a total farce.