Rare Agreement Between NYT, WSJ: ‘Clinton Cash’ Is a Real Scandal

On Friday, the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal–often a mainstream conservative bellwether–castigated Hillary Clinton for the conflicts of interest exposed by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s forthcoming book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. And, in a moment of rare bipartisan unity, the lead editorial of the New York Times–a liberal mouthpiece–largely agreed.

The key points in the WSJ editorial, “Quid Pro Clinton“:

This is how the Clintons conduct their politics and family business, to the extent these are separate enterprises. The Clinton Foundation is a nominal philanthropy that was really created as a vast fund-raising operation to promote Bill’s post-Presidential career and Hillary’s pre-Presidential one….

All of this echoes of the 1990s, as does the Clinton method of defense, which is to deny, stonewall, assail and change the subject. Hillary has already tried to deflect the fund-raising fury by coming out in favor of rewriting the First Amendment to limit campaign contributions. So because the Clintons break the rules, she wants to impose new limits on political speech on the rest of America.

And the New York Times joins in, with “Candidate Clinton and the Foundation“:

The increasing scrutiny of the foundation has raised several points that need to be addressed by Mrs. Clinton and the former president. These relate most importantly to the flow of multimillions in donations from foreigners and others to the foundation, how Mrs. Clinton dealt with potential conflicts as secretary of state and how she intends to guard against such conflicts should she win the White House.

The only plausible answer is full and complete disclosure of all sources of money going to the foundation. And the foundation needs to reinstate the ban on donations from foreign governments for the rest of her campaign — the same prohibition that was in place when she was in the Obama administration.

The donations, which included $2.35 million from a principal in the deal, were not publicly disclosed by the foundation, even though Mrs. Clinton had signed an agreement with the Obama administration requiring the foundation to disclose all donors as a condition of her becoming secretary of state. This failure is an inexcusable violation of her pledge. The donations were discovered through Canadian tax records by Times reporters. Media scrutiny is continuing, with Reuters reporting that the foundation is refiling some returns found to be erroneous.