What Happens When Reporters Do Their Job

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about the donations that were made to the Clinton Foundation in 2014.

The article reports:

Of 38 donors listed on the foundation’s website who were contacted by the Washington Examiner,18 declined to answer at all, and the other 18 either responded suspiciously or stuck to generalities and refused to address follow-up questions.

The importance of who gave to the foundation and why was highlighted this week when CBS News revealed that one donor in 2013 was Rilin Enterprises. Rilin is headed by Wang Wienlang, a Chinese businessman who was invited to join the National Peoples’ Congress as a delegate in the same year as he made the donation.

Rilin is close to China’s national security and intelligence agencies. Besides the $2 million given to the Clintons’ foundation, Rilin also spent at least another $1.4 million in 2012 lobbying Congress and the U.S. State Department, of which Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

…Another donor willing to discuss its contribution was the Norwegian Climate Foundation, which responded with a statement saying “our purpose is to make new contacts (or allies) that could be useful in our work against global warming. Therefore, we have for some years now participated in the annual meeting in New York.”

But the statement added a warning that “we have also wanted to influence the agenda of the Clinton Global Initiative events to make them get more actively involved in climate change issues. That is why we are not sure if we want to continue being a member next year. The board will make that decision in June.”

Money in politics is nothing new. However, foreign money influencing American politics is neither welcome nor acceptable. The relationship between the Clintons and foreign money has been questionable since the 1990’s. The last thing we need in the White House in 2016 is someone who can be swayed by foreign money.