Flashback: "Clinton Foundation paid Blumenthal $10K per month while he advised on Libya"

[think]

Obama didn't want Sidney Blumenthal anywhere near the State Dept and had orders to prevent him from being hired. After Hillary was told Sidney couldn't be hired she chose to use her charity as a way to get around that order:

Who Is Sidney Blumenthal?

Updated May 20, 2015 8:09 a.m. ET

The many roles of Hillary’s secret diplomatic adviser

The Blumenthal Files are the latest reminder that Mrs. Clinton’s email deletions deserve a criminal investigation. Recall that Mr. Blumenthal was barred by the Obama Administration from working at the State Department, despite Mrs. Clinton’s request to hire her old pal. We now know she worked with him anyway, potentially in violation of State rules, and that both used private email addresses.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-is-sid-blumenthal-1432077350

Clinton Foundation paid Blumenthal $10K per month while he advised on Libya

By Kenneth P. Vogel
05/28/15 05:02 AM EDT
Updated 05/28/15 02:19 PM EDT

Some officials at the charity grumbled that his hiring was a favor from the Clintons.


Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton, earned about $10,000 a month as a full-time employee of the Clinton Foundation while he was providing unsolicited intelligence on Libya to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to multiple sources familiar with the arrangement.

Blumenthal was added to the payroll of the Clintons’ global philanthropy in 2009 — not long after advising Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — at the behest of former president Bill Clinton, for whom he had worked in the White House, say the sources.


~Snip~

Yet Blumenthal’s financial and personal connections to the Clintons and their allies have emerged as subjects of intense scrutiny as Clinton seeks to gain momentum for her presidential campaign.

Blumenthal’s concurrent work for the foundation, the Brock groups and a pair of businesses seeking potentially lucrative contracts in Libya underscores the blurred lines between her State Department work and that of her family’s charitable and political enterprises....


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/clinton-foundation-sidney-blumenthal-salary-libya-118359#ixzz4ARDzQjAz

[saidsimplesimon]

1. Recommended, thank you think

No all of US suffer from a collective amnesia about the past and now the present.

[PufPuf23]

2. Thank you kr

[floriduck]

3. Her style has always been to sneak around the rules.

[think]

5. Yep. Hillary knows loopholes. Her paid speeches after leaving as SoS wouldn't have been allowed

had she still been in office.

So by not being in office it allowed her to take millions in income for her speeches to banks and corporations that actively lobby the government. Many of these corporations lobbied the State Dept while Clinton was SoS.

Firms that paid for Clinton speeches have US gov't interests

By STEPHEN BRAUN
Apr. 21, 2016 1:25 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.

The AP's review of federal records, regulatory filings and correspondence showed that almost all the 82 corporations, trade associations and other groups that paid for or sponsored Clinton's speeches have actively sought to sway the government — lobbying, bidding for contracts, commenting on federal policy and in some cases contacting State Department officials or Clinton herself during her tenure as secretary of state.

Presidents are not generally bound by many of the ethics and conflict-of-interest regulations that apply to non-elected executive branch officials, although they are subject to laws covering related conduct, such as bribery and illegal gratuities. Clinton's 94 paid appearances over two years on the speech circuit leave her open to scrutiny over decisions she would make in the White House or influence that may affect the interests of her speech sponsors....

~Snip~

The AP review identified at least 60 firms and organizations that sponsored Clinton's speeches and lobbied the U.S. government at some point since the start of the Obama administration. Over the same period, at least 30 also profited from government contracts. Twenty-two groups lobbied the State Department during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. They include familiar Wall Street financial houses such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., corporate giants like General Electric Co. and Verizon Communications Inc., and lesser-known entities such as the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and the Global Business Travel Association.

Clinton's two-year speaking tour, which took place after she resigned as secretary of state, "puts her in the position of having to disavow that money is an influence on her while at the same time backing campaign reform based on the influence on money," said Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. "It ends up creating the appearance of influence."

Read more:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ad3c483d59c9463e9a52ef4bc00351e0/firms-paid-clinton-speeches-have-us-govt-interests

[HereSince1628]

22. Working the loopholes is why she is known as OLL

which is to say Our Lady of the Loopholes

Its also why her behavior is so often suspect...from where other people stand it sure looks like her head and shoulders have pushed through the fence.

[QC]

4. That's an odd thing for a "charity" to do.

I wonder how they justify that. A late friend of the family had a charitable foundation, and he said he had to be able to show that every penny it spent was related to a legitimate charitable purpose.

Of course, he was a mere millionaire, not big rich, much less a former president.

[think]

7. Officially Sidney had a different role at the Foundation. But it's pretty obvious what he was hired

for.

[QC]

9. Maybe he dropped a sandwich off at the local shelter now and then

to cover himself while he played Jethro Bodine, Double Naught Spy.

[panader0]

23. But it's not a charity. It was dropped by Charity Navigator for it's "unusual business model".

It's a pay to play, quid pro quo set up that made millions from shady deals while HRC was SoS.
The Clinton Foundation investigation will make the email investigation look like small potatos.

[Ned_Devine]

6. Barack must be so frustrated by that type of stuff

I mean, how does he maintain his composure when dealing with someone who's just showing him up like that? I heard this story a few weeks ago and didn't realize who Blumenthal was. I guess he was the guy who did a lot of the oppo research on Obama in '08 and used it to attack him during the campaign. I guess it was dirty and offensive enough that he had crossed the line of ever being able to be forgiven for it. That was why he wanted him nowhere near his administration. She basically said 'fuck you" to Obama with this move. This is just one more reason that it drives me crazy that she keeps attaching herself to him and his record. She clearly has no respect for him.

[think]

11. Indeed. To go behind his back and pull this sort of stuff must have really been upsetting. /nt

[Ned_Devine]

17. No one ever likes to be shown up

But with these two it seems even more vindictive. I was so disappointed that he put her in his cabinet in 2008. It must have been some sort of deal with the devil.

[think]

18. You would think after Obama helped get her campaign debt paid off she'd been a bit more loyal.

One has to wonder when Obama found out that she had hired Blumenthal and that he was feeding her intel.

My guess it was around the time Guccifer hacked Blumenthal's account and spilled the beans on his conversations with Hillary.

[Ned_Devine]

20. There's an old proverb

I don't remember it exactly but it ends with "...you knew I was a snake."

[Octafish]

8. (In Tony Soprano's voice:) ''It's a foundation! Not a MONEY LAUNDRY!''

Sid steered the money trumps peace conversation to the positive!

More Very Unsavory Data from Clinton Libya Emails: The objective was LIbya's Billions of Dollars

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511490184

[think]

13. As always "Follow the money". Thanks for the additional background.

It is very much appreciated...

[think]

19. Sidney had his eye on the prize: "Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and"

Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton’s private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:

Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511490184

[Octafish]

21. Mineral Extraction sometimes requires Autocrat Extraction

Like running a private Intel outfit, covert action and all.

AllGov.com is among those wondering. Here is one of the documents that seems to support that contention:





I wonder to what, exactly, the parts about a "Trifecta" and an "October Surprise" refer?

Was Hillary Clinton, While Secretary of State, Running a Secret Spy Network?

A trove of emails released two years ago show that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had access to intelligence from a private spy network run by an old confidant.

In 2012, the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was accessed by Romanian hacker Marcel-Lehel Lazar, who went by the name Guccifer. Blumenthal’s emails, which were posted on the internet, showed he’d had correspondence with Hillary Clinton via her private email account. They revealed that Blumenthal was providing back-channel intelligence to Clinton about Libya’s civil war in the run-up to the Benghazi disaster, according to a report from ProPublica and Gawker.

One of the emails pointed out the deteriorating security situation right before the Benghazi consulate was stormed, citing “an extremely sensitive source” who pointed out the numerous bombings and kidnapping of aid workers and diplomats by those thought to be loyal to the late Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi, ProPublica reported. Despite the information gathered by Clinton’s network, she said after the Benghazi attacks of September 2012 that U.S. intelligence officials had had no advance warning of the threat.

The reports Blumenthal sent to Clinton appear to have been compiled by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) clandestine service in Europe. Drumheller left the CIA in 2005 and started his own security business.

CONTINUED...

http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/was-hillary-clinton-while-secretary-of-state-running-a-secret-spy-network-150330?news=856096

We talked a bit on it on DU last year ago or so:

Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network

and here...

Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network

[Nuclear Unicorn]

10. A bargain at twice the price considering the success story Libya has become.

[hollowdweller]

12. Why? Why? Why? Clinton????

I just don't see why, after all the unneeded crap she and Bill went thru in the 90's, if Hillary wanted a political career that they did some of this stuff.

I don't think any of it is illegal but I think it really just gives the right so much ammo to attack her and just turns off the general public.

I really think Clinton needs to work hard at communicating with people. She really needs to cast off the somewhat defensive postures because people need to think she's open and trustworthy to win!

[think]

15. It may not be illegal on Hillary's part per se but Blumenthal was feeding Clinton classified info

and he didn't have any clearance to be doing so.

He claims he just cut and pasted information he got from a former CIA officer who recently passed away so he may have some loophole of his own to use to justify his actions legally:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/blumenthal-didnt-write-any-of-the-libya-intelligence-he-sent-clinton-119081

[AzDar]

14. K & R

[Faux pas]

16. Kickin' for the truth!