Donald Trump’s running mate seizes on a report tabulating Hillary Clinton’s meetings with donors to her family foundation.
By LOUIS NELSON
POLITICO
Hammering Hillary Clinton once again over allegations she used her former position in the State Department to dole out favors to friends, Mike Pence said revelations that the former secretary of state met often with Clinton Foundation donors “is further evidence of the pay-to-play politics at her State Department.”
Pence’s statement, released by Donald Trump’s campaign Tuesday afternoon, came in response to an Associated Press story detailing how more than half of the individuals from outside the government with whom Clinton met as secretary of state were donors to her family’s foundation. At least 85 of 154 meetings outside the U.S. government Clinton had either in person or over the phone were with Clinton Foundation donors, the AP reported Tuesday.
“The fact Hillary Clinton’s official schedule was full of meetings with Clinton Foundation donors is further evidence of the pay-to-play politics at her State Department. No one is above the law,” Pence said in the statement released by the Trump campaign. “The Clinton Foundation must be immediately shut down and an independent special prosecutor be appointed to determine if access to Hillary Clinton was for sale. It would be a dereliction of duty by President Obama and his Justice Department if they fail to act on these startling new facts right now.”
In his own statement released Tuesday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus echoed Pence’s suggestion that access to Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state was determined by donations to the Clinton Foundation.
“The evidence is clear – it’s time a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the growing proof of pay-to-play at Hillary Clinton’s State Department,” Priebus said. “This is among the strongest and most unmistakable pieces of evidence of what we’ve long suspected: at Hillary Clinton’s State Department, access to the most sensitive policy makers in U.S. diplomacy was for sale to the highest bidder.”
Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon issues a lengthy statement Tuesday slamming the AP story as “faulty” and reliant on “utterly flawed data.”
“It cherry-picked a limited subset of Secretary Clinton’s schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation,” Fallon said of the story. “It is outrageous to misrepresent Secretary Clinton’s basis for meeting with these individuals.”
The fresh revelation about Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state has given the Trump camp another opening to go on the offensive against her, a change of pace for a campaign that has spent much of the month of August defending itself amid sliding poll numbers and a leadership shakeup. Trump spent much of his rally on Monday attacking Clinton over a new batch of emails and other documents released by Judicial Watch. Those new emails arrived on the same day that a federal judge ordered the State Department to release an additional 15,000 emails from Clinton’s private server.
Contained within the hundreds of pages released in the latest cache of emails were multiple requests from Clinton Foundation donors, routed through the foundation to longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin and sometimes, to Clinton herself. The Abedin emails released Monday included requests for meetings with Clinton from the crown prince of Bahrain and the wife of the emir of Qatar, as well as an appeal from Hollywood executive Casey Wasserman for help obtaining a visa for a British soccer player with a criminal history.
The emails on behalf of Wasserman and Bahrain’s crown prince arrived from Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band, while the meeting request from the Qatari emir’s wife came via Cherie Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Wasserman, Bahrain’s crown prince and the Qatari government all donated to the Clinton Foundation.
At his rally Monday night in Ohio, Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton’s relationship as secretary of state with donors to her family’s charity. He said the Justice Department could not be trusted to carry out such an investigation.
“The Justice Department is required to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor because it has proven itself to be a political arm of the White House,” he said.
“By not appointing a special prosecutor, President Obama is endorsing the actions of a secretary of state who broke ethics agreements regarding foreign donations to her family foundation, took a majority of her non-governmental meetings with donors to that foundation and who exclusively conducted all of her correspondence while in office over a secret server housed in a basement to skirt transparency laws and then lied about it to the American people,” Priebus said in his statement. “Before voters go to the polls, there needs to be an investigation.”
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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/mike-pence-clinton-prosecutor-227333#ixzz4ICdQg5MP