Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (68 page)

The lengthy record of conflations, compressions, contortions, and flubs compiled by Media Matters for America, the monitoring group started by Clinton ally David Brock, ran to twenty-two detailed and footnoted citations. On May 12, Amazon informed its customers who had purchased
Clinton Cash
as a Kindle ebook that Schweizer’s publisher, HarperCollins, would provide an updated edition in which “significant revisions have been made.” The publisher confirmed to
Politico
that the author had made “seven or eight” corrections, while insisting that “the changes Amazon is referring to as significant are actually quite minor. We made seven [or] eight factual corrections after the first printing and fixed a technical issue regarding the endnotes.” Such a “global fix,” said the publisher “may have made the changes appear more extensive than they were.”

One of those changes involved a press release about TD Bank and the Keystone XL pipeline that had been exposed as a hoax two years earlier.

To anyone who had perused the extensive dossier on Schweizer’s past work posted by Media Matters, his bias and sloppiness would have been wholly unsurprising. In case after case, dating back as far as 1993, Media Matters found ten instances when Schweizer’s reporting—almost always attacking prominent liberal Democratic elected officials such as former vice president Al Gore, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and Representative Jim McDermott—had been found “unfair,” “bogus,” “inaccurate” by reputable media outlets.

If Schweizer was not the world’s most competent journalist, however, he was prolific and ideologically reliable, as indicated by the tendentious titles of his previous books listed on Amazon:
Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy
(Doubleday, 2005);
Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy—And How They Will Do It Again if No One Stops Them
(Harper, 2009); and
Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less . . . and Even Hug Their Children More than Liberals
(Doubleday, 2008). For several years he had written agitprop for the extreme right-wing Breitbart News websites.

For conservative funders seeking to take down the most formidable Democratic presidential contender, Schweizer offered not just audacity and experience but his own nonprofit. As president of the Government Accountability Institute in Tallahassee, Florida, he could accept millions of dollars in tax-exempt funds for research, promotion, and expenses (including his $200,000 annual salary) from foundations and individuals.

And unlike the Clintons, who had disclosed decades of tax returns and more than 300,000 foundation donors, Schweizer didn’t have to reveal any of his funders.

When the Government Accountability Institute first appeared on the scene during the 2012 election cycle, the new “nonpartisan” entity almost immediately launched a series of harsh attacks on President Obama that were later determined to be inaccurate by the
Washington Post
fact-checkers. Eventually, researchers uncovered at least one important source of the money behind the “institute”—an eccentric right-wing hedge-fund executive named Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, based in New York, whose family foundation had given millions of dollars to Schweizer in 2013 and 2014.

The extent of Mercer’s specific support for
Clinton Cash
is not known, although it seems to have been the main project of GAI during that period. But when HarperCollins editor Adam Bellow, a friend of Schweizer, brought in the book, Schweizer alerted the publisher that GAI’s wealthy supporters were prepared to spend big to promote the book. Without seeking approval from HarperCollins for ads or media outlets, the GAI ran its own
Clinton Cash
publicity campaign.

The GAI has yet to release its 990 IRS form for 2015, so any specific expenditures on advertising for
Clinton Cash
remain secret. So does the disposition of the book’s advance and royalties. If Schweizer spent his nonprofit’s money promoting a book whose proceeds accrued to him personally, that would appear to represent precisely the kind of self-dealing for which he had indicted the Clintons. In 2013, the organization disclosed spending more than $100,000 for advertising on the Breitbart website—a company that happened to be chaired by Stephen Bannon, who also chairs the GAI board.

When Schweizer set out to publicize his book, one of his first stops was Capitol Hill, where he briefed members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—or at least the committee’s Republican members, notably Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, both already running for the Republican presidential nomination. It wasn’t long before the would-be nominees started repeating the message of
Clinton Cash
.

Rand Paul had opened his campaign by tarring Hillary with Bill’s sexual misconduct, clearly deciding that was the most promising way to win Republican primary votes. He mounted a cable advertising campaign in four early voting states that alluded to the foundation and email controversies. “Hillary Rodham Clinton represents the worst of the Washington machine. The arrogance of power, corruption, cover-up. Conflicts of interest,” declared Paul’s ads. “The Washington machine is destroying the American dream.”

That thrust didn’t save Paul from becoming one of the first Republicans eliminated from the primary race. Schweizer preferred Rubio, his home state senator, who most reminded him of the “optimistic” Ronald Reagan of his youth.

But the most aggressive broadsides against the Clintons and the foundation were hurled by Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief and failed senatorial candidate who had once appeared on a CGI panel. During a June interview on Fox News Channel, Fiorina went out of her way to bring up one of the most destructive—and wholly false—accusations about the foundation’s finances.

Asked to comment on a
New York Times
article about Marco Rubio’s finances, she replied, “I wish they would do more of a story on what Bill and Hillary Clinton have been doing with their money. Or, more importantly, what they’ve been doing with their donors’ money to the Clinton Global Initiative.

“Honestly, the question I think now for the Clintons is what else don’t we know? What don’t we know about your donors? What don’t we know about the conflicts of interest that those donors represent?” she asked. “When Mrs. Clinton is serving as secretary of state, we are now finding out that so little of those charitable donations actually go to charitable works. They are hiring campaign staff.”

As this episode showed, Fiorina didn’t hesitate to stretch the truth for political gain as the primaries unfolded. The foundation had never hired any “campaign staff,”
an obvious falsehood. But the canard about “so little of those charitable donations” going toward charitable purposes had been repeated often enough by then to cause concern within the foundation. Fiorina may have heard it uttered by a Fox Business anchor, or read it in
Clinton, Inc
., a 2014 book by
Weekly Standard
writer Daniel Halper. She didn’t invent the slur but gave it fresh currency in the primary campaign.

The charitable explanation, so to speak, was that Fiorina had simply misunderstood how the Clinton Foundation worked. Challenged to prove her assertion, a spokesperson for her super PAC, Carly for America, referred FactCheck.org to the foundation’s IRS Form 990 for 2013, which showed total revenue of $149 million—and total grant disbursements of only $9 million, or roughly 6 percent.

But of course, very little of the foundation’s activity or money was spent on doling out grants. Instead, its various initiatives hired staff to pursue charitable purposes directly. Academic experts described it as an “operating foundation” or a “public charity,” rather than a traditional foundation that used an endowment to write checks. Indeed, as foundation spokesman Craig Minassian explained to FactCheck’s reporter, many traditional foundations, such as Gates and Rockefeller, made annual grants to the Clinton Foundation to support its programs. And the Gates Foundation, oriented toward efficiency and results, had audited Clinton Foundation programs to ensure its money was spent wisely.

Clinton critics, such as conservative commentator David Frum, carped about the foundation’s spending on travel and salaries, as if a global enterprise could operate without airfares and car rentals. (Only Bill Clinton could rely on his friends’ aircraft, and even he occasionally flew commercial; the foundation’s two thousand other employees, including Ira Magaziner, usually flew economy class and stayed in cheap hotels.)

The critics also pointed to Charity Navigator, a rating agency that had declined to score the Clinton Foundation and placed it on a “watch list.” But Charity Navigator said it was unable to rate the Clinton Foundation because its various initiatives made an unusual “business model” that didn’t fit within the usual parameters. And the watch list was only meant to signal press scrutiny of the foundation, with no judgment
about its probity. “A lack of a rating does not represent a positive or negative evaluation by Charity Navigator,” it said.

The American Institute of Philanthropy’s evaluation arm, CharityWatch, had given the Clinton Foundation an “A” rating, based on analysis showing that 89 percent of its revenues were devoted to charitable purposes—well above the 75 percent that was standard among public charities. Daniel Borochoff, the group’s president and founder, told FactCheck that Fiorina’s comments had only revealed “her lack of understanding of charitable organizations,” a generous interpretation of her remarks.

Before the end of 2015, the foundation had taken steps to improve its image and practices in response to negative media coverage. Frustrated as the Clintons were by what they deemed unfair criticism, appearances mattered.

In response to a series of stories in
Politico
and other outlets that raised questions about the foundation’s reporting of its revenues to the IRS, Donna Shalala hired tax accountants and lawyers to review all of its 990 filings dating back to 2010. The foundation had failed to specify certain government grants on a line devoted to that category, and CHAI had made a similar error on two years of its returns in 2012 and 2013.

Correcting those mistakes—and creating a separate category for speech-related income donated by members of the Clinton family, which amounted to several million dollars—prompted the foundation to refile amended returns for those years. In statements to the press, both the foundation and CHAI described those decisions as “voluntary,” since their lawyers had advised them that refiling was not required. The changes had not altered the income, expenditures, assets, or liabilities for either organization.

Several months earlier, the foundation had announced another change that had mostly been relegated to a footnote. Going forward, it would disclose the names of donors and donation ranges on a quarterly rather than an annual basis (as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had suggested might be wise back when Hillary was confirmed as secretary of state).

Taken together, those changes prompted Charity Navigator to remove the Clinton Foundation from its “watch list” just before Christmas. On its website, the watchdog group explained that the foundation had “
provided publicly accessible information regarding their amended tax forms for 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. . . . This information, along with the public memorandum submitted addressing the other issues raised in the watch list entry, meets our requirements for removal.”

Coming just before the end of the year, when many Americans made final charitable donations to meet tax deadlines, the decision’s timing was helpful. While several news outlets reported the change, including the
Washington Post
and CBS News, it was difficult to assess the lasting damage to the foundation’s reputation.

The Clinton Foundation’s small public relations staff struggled through the primary season to respond to the continuing drumbeat of attacks, mostly from Republicans. As Vermont senator Bernie Sanders gained surprising traction against Hillary with his left-wing, small-donor, anti-establishment challenge to her “coronation,” the debate turned away from the foundation and the issue of foreign donations toward her own efforts to earn money after leaving the State Department.

Sanders exercised a surprising degree of control over the narrative of the Democratic primary. When the crusty senator declared during their first debate in October that he and the rest of the country were “sick of hearing about your damned emails,” he tamped down the obsession with that topic—despite the fact that the FBI and Justice Department were conducting an investigation to determine whether anyone in the State Department, including Hillary, had violated laws relating to classified information.

The mountain populist preferred to discuss another issue: Hillary’s acceptance of $750,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs—the Wall Street mammoth whose conduct leading up to the 2008 recession had transformed it into a symbol for all the flaws and inequities of the American financial system.

In a refrain that would not end until she won the California primary in June 2016, the Sanders campaign demanded that Hillary release the transcripts of her Goldman speeches. Sanders only knew about those speeches—and others that had earned her almost $22 million since 2013—because unlike him, she had disclosed her income taxes. Many of those speeches had been delivered to banks and other corporate in
terests that had lobbied the federal government, including the State Department. The implication, repeated relentlessly by Sanders and his surrogates, was that those payments somehow shaped Clinton’s policies.

When Hillary confronted her opponent, demanding that he back up his insinuations with evidence, he waved her off. He couldn’t prove any wrongdoing, but she couldn’t prove a negative. Her speaking fees were not out of line with the level of her celebrity, as attested by experts in the field even before she left office. She had scrupulously rejected any foreign speaking engagements in order to deflect criticism.