About the Never-Trump Skirmish of 2017

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

True. The resolution could say something like, “While HRC’s two billion dollar charity is technically legal, and technically not a money laundering scheme,

Pssst….the Clinton Foundation is not worth two billion…in fact, being a charity, it’s not really worth anything as it cannot be purchased and if dissolved it has to donate all assets to a comparable charity, but even if we pretend it could somehow be sold, it is not worth two billion. It has only ever collected two billion in its entire lifetime.

But, more importantly: You just never seem to understand that the Clinton Foundation is, as you have described it, an influence peddling scheme that is _less_ objectionable than all the dark money PACs wandering around that are funneling support to politicians, or campaign contributions. That the absolute literal worst case is ‘people donating money to the Clinton Foundation, which then used that for charitable works, thus boasting her image, and in return the people donating get a quid quo pro from that’, which is not anywhere near as bad as what is openly allowed under campaign finance laws.

You have decided to take the worst possible interpretation of the Clinton Foundation, the absolutely worst thing it could be doing, and have decided that not only was it doing that, which it’s not but I’m tired of arguing about, but you have failed to notice that such a thing is completely allowed by current campaign law for political action committees! That she could have, literally, done all that in the open, with an explicitly political organization called the ‘Clinton PAC’ or something.

Granted, such a thing would have been trickier before Citizens United in 2010, the PAC wouldn’t be allowed to directly promote her as a candidate. But everyone else got around the rule by running ‘issue ads’ that were very specifically targeted on opponents. And then, Citizens United happened, and her friends could have set up a SuperPAC that is allowed to directly promote her as a candidate as long as she doesn’t tell them what to do. Oh, and let’s not forget actual campaign contributions.

All that is entirely legal.

If your level of corruption is ‘People can freely spend money making a politician look good, thus being able to legally bribe politicians without ever actually giving them money.’, you have literally indicted the entire political class. The fact you keep harping on this as absolute proof the Clintons are corrupt is completely insane, especially since, as a charity, the Clinton Foundation did not particularly exist to promote the Clintons, and is not really allowed to do that, and, well, didn’t.

Your point that ‘The Clinton Foundation has her name on it and people thought good things about her when it did good things, so people donating to it were really helping her, and she knew it.’. is, perhaps, in some other universe, a universe where politics had absolutely no money in it, a legitimate point that some microscopic level of influence peddling could happen.

But in this universe, we live in an ocean of influence peddling, where people can secretly buy ads (Or, rather, secretly donate to organizations that buy ads.) to promote politicians that do things they like, and also, least we forget, directly donate to their campaign…and somehow all that is fine! The hypothetical influencing peddling scheme you have invented is an eyedropper in that ocean. It is nonsense.

And you want to assert that Hillary Clinton should had to step away from the Clinton Foundation before taking office, I’m all for that…well, except for the damn obvious point she already stepped away from it when she was Secretary of State and has no position in it at all.

Trump’s four billion dollar hotel empire is technically illegal because of its money laundering potential. Further there’s no way Congress could oversee that empire (no, you’re not allowed to review all of the charity’s emails or activities, those are private).”

I did not say Trump’s four billion dollar hotel empire was ‘legal’. [Edit: illegal, I mean. It is not illegal.] I said it was grounds for impeachment under the emoluments clause.

Or, more technically, I argue that Congress, due to the emoluments clause, has the right to make rules and regulations about what sort of foreign income a President can accept(1), and a four billion dollar multinational hotel empire that already had several public examples of diplomats saying they would stay at Trump’s hotel to curry favor with him(2) pretty clearly indicated that then needed to make some really specific rules, instead of just letting him shrug and say ‘Hey, my kids are running it, but I’ll keep owning it.’

The needed rules would probably impact his business very badly, which I suspect would mean he would resign or refuse to do them (Thus needing impeachment), but that’s why you don’t run to be the damn president if you aren’t willing to do what is required to be in office.

1) Actually, as they make the rules about what people can be impeached for, they basically have the right to make rules about any sort of income at all. The emolument clauses says they are supposed to do it for emoluments from foreign governments, and are not to allow any emoluments at all from domestic governments, but Congress is basically the referee in their own game and can do whatever they want.

Hell, if they have enough to impeach the president over a behavior, they have enough to pass a law about that behavior over his signature, and then he has legitimately broken the law and there’s no question about ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’…well, if he keeps doing the behavior, I guess. While it is not legal to make laws that only applies to a specific person by name (It’s a writ of attainder), it is perfectly legal to make a law that only applies to whoever holds the office of ‘The President’.

2) Which sounds crazy to us that they would just say that, basically admitting to what we think of as bribery, but people need to realize our emoluments clause is pretty unique to the US and other countries traditionally give gifts to heads of states, and do not really understand our rules, as evidenced by all the personal gifts US presidents have gotten over the centuries and then had to give up. They just come out and say ‘I am staying in the President’s hotel because he’s going to like that and be more likely to agree with me’, which is literally the purpose of the emoluments clause.Report

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

If memory serves, although she promised she’d do that she didn’t actually. But in any case you’re claiming that HRC’s wallet is different than Bill’s wallet, which brings up the point that his bill rate went up a lot when she became SoS.

Uh, what?

What the heck does his wallet have to do with anything? We’re talking about a non-profit.

You want to argue that the paid speeches are unacceptable, that is a completely unrelated matter.

That argument sounds familiar. Oh I know, “Hey, my husband is running it. I have no connection to it at all.”

Pssst….neither Hillary nor Bill (Or even Chelsea) Clinton have ever run the Clinton Foundation.

Exactly. She gets a total pass on her activities, even if smelly, because she’s a lawyer and set up her “charity” to be technically legal.

You keep putting charity in quotes.

You understand that it is, in fact, an actual charity, and that none of the Clintons have ever made a dime from it, right?

I mean, you seemed to have understood this point before, because you then talk about how it exists to make them ‘look good’, and people donate money to it for it to spend to get the Clinton’s PR…

…and then you just sorta forget all that and start asserting it’s not a real charity, and exists to line their pockets. Over and over.

The Clinton Foundation, again, literally has never given any money to the Clintons. (Now, it has occasionally flow the one of Clintons somewhere and put them up at its expense so they can give a speech _for_ the charity, with the proceeds going to the Clinton Foundation, but it’s pretty easy to do the math on that and notice they’ve given way more to the charity than any amount of ‘free trips’ they’ve gotten out of it.)

However, big picture, that “charity” wouldn’t exist (at least on that scale) without their political power.

Yes, the giant charitable organization that helps a hell of a lot of people would not exist without their political power.

But, then again, you can’t seem to remember that you’ve have already agreed with me in the past that it’s a real charity that does a lot of good, and the problem is, you claim, that people donate to it so the Clintons can get free PR from their donation.

I’m really not going to keep arguing that with you, keep reminding you ‘They are not taking money from it’ and then you go to ‘Oh, but they’re getting good press’ literally every time you bring it up.

That’s before the whole problem that the letter of the law for “emoluments” doesn’t say “don’t have them”, it says “tell Congress when you have them”.

That is not what it says.

“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

You are trying to read that as ‘they may accept those things unless Congress does not consent’.

But that is not what it says it at all, it says ‘they shall not accept those things unless Congress does consent’, which rather implies until Congress consents, he is disallowed from accepting those things.

Congress ‘not doing something’ cannot be the basis of legality. Well, not when that ‘not doing something’ has no time limit, and the act of acceptance is instantaneous.(1) ‘You shall not do something at this moment unless something else eventually objects later!’ Huh?

Under your logic, the president is offered something, Congress has not objected to that offer because the offer literally just happened, so he can accept the thing, and now he’s got the thing. (There’s nothing about retroactively having to give it away later.) The ‘shall not’ cannot possibly come into effect, and the entire clause is stupid and pointless. And thus that interpretation cannot be correct.

Edit: Actually, that can’t be right anyway. Congress has no right at all to _reject_ an emolument. That is not a thing they can do. It is simply not there. They can consent to it, or they can…say nothing. So the entire interpretation is even stupider. Within the bounds of that clause, there is nothing Congress can do to say ‘The President is not allowed to accept that thing’.

The emoluments clause clearly should be read as the president ‘shall not’ accept an emoluments or a titles of nobility _until_ Congress says ‘Yes’. (Assuming they do say yes.)

1) Actually, someone ‘not doing something’ can, indeed, be a basis for a constitutional action…for example, if the president fails to sign or veto legislation in a certain time, things happen. But you will notice a very specific time limit on all those things. And the constitution could have, indeed, said ‘The President can accept these things after 30 days unless Congress objects within that time…’ or something. But it does not say anything close to that.Report

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

No, people give money to it to get on or stay on the Clintons’ good side.

It is literally 100% legal for someone to blatantly say ‘If you want to stay on my good side, you have to donate to the charity I support’. 100% legal.

You keep trying to assert corruption while missing the actual corruption part of it. She has to do something in a corrupt manner. It has to, in some manner, impact actual duties of the office.

Here, have a Wikipedia: Corruption is a form of dishonest or unethical conduct by a person entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire personal benefit.

It can be the first part without the second (For example, done out of spite), but isn’t corruption with just the second clause. You are basically trying to assert that someone doing an action for personal benefit is corruption by itself, without it involving their office at all. This is absurd. People are allowed to do things that other people like, or things for other people, or things that make other people look good. All those things are…not just legal, but completely ethical. This isn’t some weird technicality of the law. For it to be corruption, she _has to alter her official behavior_.

Yes, but that’s irrelevant. TCF’s purpose isn’t to line the Clintons’ pockets, it’s to expand their political power. It does the “power and influence” stuff that we typically see from Billionaires. It funds leftist causes. It’s also a parking spot for Clinton loyalists who are between insider jobs.

And that is unethical in what way exactly?

You started off pretending Trump’s businesses and the Clinton Foundation were identical, that they were both corrupt, but Clinton’s was legal corruption and Trump doesn’t know laws exist.

But here the starting sanity check: All politicians are allowed, right now, to accept campaign contributions up to a certain level. That’s literally the baseline. Clinton herself does this. Additionally, politicians can give paid speeches, or get promised lobbyist positions, all sorts of things that can, in theory, influence their behavior.

It is possible to argue the baseline is unethical, it is even possibly to argue that even less corrupt behavior is unethical.

But it is completely absurd to complain about political things that do not reach the ‘legal and accepted’ amount of corruption that all politicians can do.

What Clinton is _hypothetically_ doing with the Clinton Foundation is much less corrupt than that baseline. Campaign contributions get used for all sorts of personal things, and even when not, are literally replacing money the candidate would have to spend. That’s not how charities work. And, again, none of the Clintons run the Clinton Foundation.

So basically you’re already at one step removed from corruption on the ‘accepting money’ end, in that it’s not clear that she really did benefit…and no, just asserting it was PR is not how it works. The Clinton Foundation has never been a very visible charity. You can’t just vaguely wave your hands and assert donations to it helped her…

…but that’s not really important, because you don’t even seem to notice that, in the case of political corruption, the concept of ‘corruption’ requires misusing the office for the person whowants something. And we have no evidence of that.

Basically, you are asserting that Donald Trump is running up and down the street smashing windows with a baseball bat and stealing stuff from cars….and that Hillary Clinton only decided to be a volunteer crossing guard because she thinks people will like her better for that, and not from any noble intentions, and that her friends paid for her purse. Those are not equivalent things. Those aren’t even measurable against each other.

The problem is not that ‘operating a charity for PR reasons’ is ‘technically legal’, and Trump’s business ‘technically isn’t’. The problem is that the second is clearly actual corruption where the president does acts in an official capacity that blatantly benefit…well, him, actually. Which isn’t even what we’re talking about in normal political corruption, where two people basically _secretly_ trade benefits, usually cash towards the pol, and something wanted in the other direction. But Trump doesn’t bother with such nonsense, he just openly does stuff for himself, then tells everyone.

Hillary Clinton, who is not insane, would presumable be doing the normal sort of political corruption, which would be someone manages to get money to her, and she does them a favor. The problem is that one has ever managed to figure out the vitally important second part of that, even and the first part is pretty damn dubious WRT the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation is not her personal property, in fact, it’s not even her personal _charity_, the Clintons have a normal ‘rich person personal charity that they can give money to any time for a tax write-off’.

But even if you can do that, if you can show she somehow benefits from people donating to a specific charity because it has her name on it, you them have to to point to something and say ‘This donation caused her to…’ or ‘She was given that in exchange for…’

No, people give money to it to get on or stay on the Clintons’ good side. One of the criticisms before HRC decided she really was going to run for President was how secretive TCF was about it’s donors. Blackwater, even when they’re not killing people, is hardly known for its humanitarian efforts.

There is an obvious reason Blackwater no longer gives to the Clinton Foundation. The founder of Blackwater is really close to Trump, his sister-in-law is Secretary of Education, and Trump is very anti-Clinton and probably would not approve of any donations.

Further, the international donations dried up the moment the Clintons lost power. Why did Blackwater (etc) only care about “PR” when the Clintons were in power? How about the Saudis and the Russians? Why can’t TCF still get 9 digit “donations” from companies that more typically never give anyone anything?

The donations did not stop when the ‘Clintons lost power’.

The donations first steeply dropped in 2015 when the Clinton Foundation became a political issue. The timeframe is exactly wrong for your claim, because the donation slowed _as she ran for office_, and continued to drop even as everyone thought she’d be the next president.

Congress has had lots of opportunity to withhold their approval. If we seriously need a piece of paper with their sign off then it’d be trivial to get one with the current Congressional makeup. But my expectation is something along those lines happened during the transition. We don’t hear the Dem political leadership talk about using this method to remove him.

Yes, we do. Violations of the emoluments clause was one of the claims on the articles of impeachment recently introduced.

Granted, the obstruction of justice thing ranked higher, but it was there.Report

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

People as far left as Jimmy Carter have pointed out there’s clearly a link between the money she’s given and the political actions taken by her family.

Weird how you can keep saying ‘people have said there is clearly a link’, and yet be unable to cite any examples of such a link. (BTW, Jimmy Carter is not actually very ‘far left’)

But as soon as Clinton lost the election, many of the criticisms directed toward the Clinton Foundation were reaffirmed. Foreign governments began pulling out of annual donations, signaling the organization’s clout was predicated on donor access to the Clintons, rather than its philanthropic work. In November, the Australian government confirmed it “has not renewed any of its partnerships with the scandal-plagued Clinton Foundation, effectively ending 10 years of taxpayer-funded contributions worth more than $88 million.” The government of Norway also drastically reduced their annual donations, which reached $20 million a year in 2015.

To recap what that article just actually described:

a) It cites an November article in which the Australian government confirmed that it had _already_ failed to renew partnerships with the Clinton Foundations, which means it already did that before the election. That article came out November 28 2016, which in turn cites a Nov 23 article, and the government had already ‘failed to renew’, so unless the theory is that all the (Presumably year-long) agreements happened to expire between November 10 and November 23, and that the Australian government turned on a dime and quickly moved to not renew them, what _actually_ happened was that Australia failed to renew them as Clinton was frontrunner to become president, not after she lost the election.

b) Norway’s highest level of contributions were in 2015, or, to rephrase, they started reducing them in 2016. Again, at the exact time she was assumed to be the next president of the United States. (1)

In fact, there’s a huge amount of total gibberish articles published literally that November after the election saying ‘Oh, now that Clinton has lost, donations to the Clinton Foundation have been cut back! It was all just a scam.’…and those articles are citing a combination of of public information from _2015_ for the personal donations (As obviously no charity releases information that fast) and also asking governments, who of course have huge lead times and responded ‘Yeah, we already stopped or reduced donations to them’, or at least that’s the quote that made it into the article.

Governments have entire processes to go though to decide what charities they support, and they can’t just stop supporting a charity in three weeks, at least not without the legislature stepping in with public hearings that would have made the news. And I suspect the actual response from Australia was ‘We stopped donating to them last year when they became controversial’, and the article just cherry-picked whatever part of the statement that didn’t include the time or reason. (Which could have fooled most people if those articles had come out a year later, but fail when they come out almost immediately after the election and it’s clear any decisions had to have been made prior to that.)

And these utterly dishonest articles never seem to notice ‘Wait, doesn’t the fact that the donations were reduced before the election that she was assumed to be the winner of invalidate our entire damn point?’. Governments and wealthy people all over the world: ‘Oh, hey, she’s about to become president instead of a private citizen, time to stop buying access.’

If we operate in the real world, where charity decisions take months to wind themselves through governments, there is a pretty clear pattern:

Charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundations ramped themselves up in, roughly, 2013 or so. That’s what Norway’s did, at least. This is immediately _after_ Hillary Clinton left Sec of State. They rose until 2015, and then stopped. And what happened in 2015? Clinton declared she was running for president in April.

If there is any correlation between charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s current or perceived-in-the-future political value, it is literally a negative one. Now, correlation does not equal causality, and I don’t think the ramping up had anything to do with anything, and I think the reduced donations were due to controversy, but the correlation is exactly the opposite of what you insist on implying.

As for now? That article is making a lot out of the fact it is closing a single office. In reality, the Clinton Foundation is completely restructuring right now, including changing their name and separating out parts of it.Report