Saturday on CNN’s “Smerconish,” Breitbart editor at large Peter Schweizer laid out some of the allegations from his book and subsequent documentary “Clinton Cash,” which shows pattern of behavior in which donations were given to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable and those contributors later receiving favorable, especially while Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was secretary of state.
Some of those allegations are expected to be included in a speech from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to given next week.
Transcript as follows:
SMERCONISH: So here’s what he seems to be talking about, the long summering allegations about the Clintons and money. Accusations largely from the book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” which has now spawned a documentary that showed at the Cannes film festival.
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The documentary is going to open July 24 on the eve of the Democratic convention and joining me now is the executive producer of the movie and author of the book on which it’s premised, Peter Schweizer, and David Brock, founder of the Clintons’ super PAC, Correct the Record.
Peter, let me begin with you. I’ve read the book. Here’s the premise as I understand it. It’s that they allowed individuals to skirt the long standing legal prohibition against foreign participation in American politics by hiring Bill to speak and by making contributions to the Clinton Initiative in return for political influence. Is that the Cliff’s note version?
SCHWEIZER: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s the old adage, follow the money. I happen to believe when it comes to American industries or foreign oligarchs sending large checks to politicians they’re not going it out of the kindness of their hearts. They want favors and in the case of the Clintons, we’re talking about massive amounts of money and we’re talking about favorable action in return.
SMERCONISH: So give me the best evidence, the short version of the most compelling case that you write about in the book.
SCHWEIZER: Well, I think the power of the case is that you see the same pattern repeated over and over and over again. There’s no disputing that. A foreign oligarch, it can be a corporation, it can be a financier, it can be a foreign government — sends the Clintons a large sum of money, Hillary Clinton as secretary of state takes favorable action on their behalf. You can look at a couple of those examples, Michael, and say maybe it’s just coincidence, but when you see that same pattern over and over again, I think it’s naïve to think there’s nothing going on there.
SMERCONISH: One example you wrote about extensively has to do with uranium.
SCHWEIZER: Yes, it’s a Canadian financer named Frank Giustra. Bill Clinton helps him procure a lucrative uranium concession in Kazakhstan. Bill Clinton’s foundation gets $30 million out of the deal. Later on that Canadian company wants to sell to the Russian government which requires federal government approval. One of the agencies that has to approve that deal is Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Nine shareholders in that company in that company send $145 million to the Clinton foundation and by the way, as The New York Times and others have confirmed that story, some of those donations were not disclosed by the Clintons even though they had promised president Obama and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee they would do that exact thing.
SMERCONISH: But Time magazine taking the case that you established said there’s absolutely no evidence that Hillary Clinton played a direct role in any of that?
SCHWEIZER: Well, we don’t know. I mean, this is the problem. Imagine you had a county council where you had nine people voting and everybody votes in favor of a development, but one of the county commissioners got $145 million from the developer. Wouldn’t people say we need to look into this? And that’s what I’m calling for. I’m calling for an investigation. To me it’s absurd that in a time when we are looking at you know, $50,000 or $100,000 donation to political campaigns and arguing influence, nobody wants to look at $145 million that happens to come sometimes in hidden donations at the precise time that this government agency is looking at this.
SMERCONISH: I would say this. I mean, there are a lot of interesting pieces to a puzzle that you’ve assembled but I don’t know that you’ve put the puzzle together. Let me put on the screen from the table of contents of book. I want to draw attention to Chapter 11. The title “Quid pro Quo?” but at the end, you put a question mark after it. So in the end what have you established?
SCHWEIZER: What I’ve established is a pattern of behavior and this is one of the biggest misnomers by the way that you’re going to hear from the Clinton campaign and their supporters is that there’s no quid pro quo. That’s not the legal standard. I would ask might be to look at recent cases, whether it’s Gov. McDonnell in Virginia, whether it’s Sen. Menendez in New Jersey, there’s a former governor in Alabama who’s in jail precisely on a pattern of behavior and in none of those cases was there an email or recorded phone conversation that established the quid pro quo. It was a pattern of money flowing, favorable action taken. And in the case of the Clintons it is far more established than it was in any of those cases.
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