Foreign Contributions to the Clinton Foundation
The Republicans continue to make claims that the Clinton foundation has taken thousands from various foreign entities in return for favors. Maybe, maybe not. Foreign companies and individuals are free to do so. It is not a crime, but appearances are important in any election and this is the problem for Hillary. She claims she has little to do with it and knows nothing about such contributions. Like many of her email statements, her Benghazi statements, this is not quite the whole truth. No wonder why 60% of Americans view her with suspicion. This is not to say Trump does not have the same problem, he does. He continues to not release his tax return claiming it is because of an audit pending. LOL, since that claim, numerous people including the IRS state a person can release a tax return while an audit is happening. If he is not hiding something, there is no reason not to release them. Both candidates are full of bullshit.
For Hillary, some great contributors for the Clinton Foundation were Russian during the 2009-10 reset in relations. The joint effort was over Skolkovo, a new high tech Silicon Valley-like city of 30,000. This project was the cornerstone of her reset in relations initiative. Hillary was appointed by Obama to lead the American side. The project was to find common ground so that a bonding friendship would arise. The Skolkovo town was that. Russian committed $5 billion, and Putin called it, “his child”. Hillary was in charge in finding American investors mostly from the I.T or high tech world.
The major players like Cisco, Google, and Intel, donated millions to the Foundation and to the Skolkovo Putin pet. Cisco contributed $1 billion. They committed the most of the 22 American firms by May 2010. Soon, the total amounted to 28 firms, some Russian were included. Of this, 17 of them made direct contributions to the Clinton Foundation, apart from what they allocated to the project. The question is why? This was not a Clinton Foundation project but a U.S. government project. Were they hoping to get some preferential treatment from Hillary, who was Secretary of State? Russian funds were donated to the Foundation amounting to $25,000. The Russian company, Renova, directly donated to the Foundation.
The whole project was really a transfer of technology via Skolkovo, including the latest developments in biomedicine, information technology, energy, satellite and space technology, according to a 2012 U.S. Army report on the project. Was Putin hoodwinking Obama and Clinton? Were they aware of the technology actually being given to the Russians? The report went on to say that this technology allowed the Russians to develop a hypersonic cruise missile in their “military” section. Even the FBI had sent warnings to Hillary about how the Russians were using this technology and indicated that Putin’s true motives were to obtain secret classified documents from American defense companies working on cutting edge technology. Even a State department cable was sent to her about the danger.
Hillary did nothing to curtail the Skolkovo project. It is clear if Hillary is elected, Putin will be a wily adversary for her. Maybe Hillary was apprehensive about the technology transfer but felt it was harmless and with so many Russian donations, dismissed it?
Just another reason to think hard about who to vote for.
