While Donald Trump continued the slump that began at his own shambolic convention, the Democratic nominee has risen to the top of nearly every national and swing-state poll.
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Of 154 outsiders whom Clinton phoned or met with in her first two years at State, 85 had made contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and their contributions, taken together, totaled $156 million. She was bound to stumble; equally predictably, this has been precipitated by the undying scandal over her e-mail habits as secretary of state.
And Rodin’s office did not return a request for comment.
And then there was the use of a private server and her emails.
An he called Citizens United “a right-wing group that’s been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s” that is again “trying to make something out of nothing”. But the judge never gave a timeline for those releases, and it looks like her full schedule won’t be made public until around December 30.
The only response from AP was to release a statement saying it “focused on Mrs. Clinton’s meetings and calls involving people outside government who were not federal employees or foreign diplomats, because meeting with USA or foreign government officials would inherently have been part of her job as secretary of state”. The e-mails were published by Judicial Watch, which obtained them via a law suit.
State Department officials have said they are not aware of any agency actions influenced by the Clinton Foundation.
Yet the frequency of the overlaps shows the mixing of access and donations. “Good friend of ours”, wrote Mr Band. So if you’re secretary of state and foreign countries – standing to benefit in a variety of ways, financial and otherwise, from USA policy – are pumping millions of dollars into your husband’s charitable foundation, well of course it looks like a potential problem. The e-mails show that on many occasions, donors did not get what they wanted. The people who gave the money knew exactly what they were doing.
Nevertheless, recent Democratic email dumps may be as noteworthy for what’s missing from them as for what they reveal.
Chelsea Clinton would remain on the board of her family’s foundation even if her mother is elected president, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
On Wednesday evening, Hillary Clinton said the AP had only “looked at a small portion of my time” as secretary of state and had drawn the conclusion that her meetings with Nobel laureates – such as Peace Prize victor Elie Wiesel – were connected to the foundation rather than their work as global leaders. Arguably, she already has been by the Federal Bureau of Investigation over her e-mails.
To arbitrarily draw a line between these people, many of whom headed up important non-governmental organizations, is just that: arbitrary.
Now: Damon Linker, a writer at The Week, points out that Hillary Clinton’s critics haven’t actually found a smoking gun in all of this, no evidence of a quid pro quo in which money was exchanged for services. There will be plenty more attempts to portray Mrs Clinton as deceitful before November.
“Hillary Clinton is in a pretty strong spot right now in the campaign given the repeated missteps by Trump and quite frankly if I’m her it may not be a bad thing to let Donald Trump be the only candidate making news on any given day”, said GOP strategist Ryan Williams, a veteran of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.
Yet if Hillary Clinton becomes president, the scheme is unsustainable.
Long distracted by scandals of his own, Mr Trump has also piled in.
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Clinton leads Trump in national and state polls, leaving many of her aides and supporters to conclude that addressing the issue isn’t worth the risk to her electoral standing. That’s why we continue to urge Republican Donald Trump to release his tax returns.
