Rob: Welcome to the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show WNJC 1360 AM out of Washington Township, reaching Metro Philly and South Jersey. Sponsored by Opednews.com Shows are available on iTunes and on Stitcher using my name Rob Kall K-A-L-L. My guest tonight is Ken Silverstein. He's a Washington, D.C. writer, he's contributing editor for Vice Magazine, and does the column Washington Babylon for the New York Observer. He is the author of several books including The Secret World of Oil. He just wrote an article for Harper's titled "Shaky Foundations: The Clintons' so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich family friends. Welcome to the show.
KS: Thank you.
Rob: So this is pretty serious accusations that the Clintons have used their foundation for crass profiteering and influence peddling.
KS: And as I was writing it I realized that people would go, this is extreme, this is right-wing propaganda. But I am total confident in what I wrote and I think the Clintons love to portray all of their enemies as right-wing nuts and you know, so I'm happy to say that I'm a Libertarian, lefty for the most part. But not part of the right-wing attack machine and anybody who reads my work can see that I attack all sides equally. But it's serious allegations, but well documented. If you actually go through the Clinton Foundation financial filings their IRS filings as a non-profit and their audits, you can see that they are taking in a lot of money, millions, tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars and they spend a lot less for true charitable causes. They promote themselves, they pay their friends very very lavishly. And when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, major donors to the Clinton foundation, not only got her attention, but she took actions. I can't prove that she said to herself, they donate to the family foundation and I, she was a trustee at one point, and hence legally liable for any wrong doing like her husband and Chelsea who are currently trustees and board members. I can't say that she sat there and said to herself, this is a major donor to the foundation and I will take actions that benefit that donor in places, as I describe in my story, like Kazakhstan and Columbia. But I know that she did take actions as Secretary of State that made huge profits for donors to the Clinton Foundation. And that's a massive conflict of interest. And they just, the reason, my story was timed to come out right after on Monday, the Clinton Foundation under duress from outside parties, critics had to submit four years of, re-submit four years of IRS tax filings and a new audit because they admitted there had been some unfortunate mistakes. If you go through these preposterous filings that they submitted yesterday and I talked to a number of people who are very familiar with the accounting world and nonprofits. It's a sham, it's not a charity. It is a vehicle to promote the Clinton family and to make money for the Clinton Family and their cronies. Exactly as I stated quite rightly and accurately in my story.
Rob: Wow, it's a sham, huh? Okay so you say in your article, "If the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies do their jobs, the foundation will be closed and its current and past trustees, who include Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton, will be indicted. That's because their so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich Clinton family friends." And you say, "It's beyond dispute."
KS: It's beyond dispute, there's no question about it. First off let me just say that the new filings were submitted by PricewaterhouseCoopers which is a big accounting firm which I think is going to find themselves in a lot of trouble because they submitted financial statements that they know are false. The prior accountant for the Clinton Foundation was a Little Rock firm called BKD, which is very, it's been accused, not accused, it's been documented to have violated Securities and exchange commission rules, it's been sanctioned by the SEC. And you wonder why does that huge huge foundation like the Clinton Foundation use a Little Rock accounting firm all these years up until under pressure they got PricewaterhouseCoopers? I mean that's what Bernie Madoff did or Madoff, I never remember how to pronounce his name. He had a really small firm that he could pressure to submit phony statements to support his Ponzi scheme. And the Clintons did something very very familiar. They used an unknown Little Rock firm that they could influence and that's why they had to re-submit all of these filings. Now, the main focus of my story, and you can look at so many different aspects of the Clinton Foundation and realize that it's a fraud but the thing I focused on is a Canadian Entity, which is allegedly a non-profit too, called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership. Now in Canada, donors to charities, alleged charities, don't have to be disclosed. In the United States you don't have to disclose them publicly but you have to disclose them to the IRS. In Canada there is enhanced privacy for donors. So what happened and what I focused on is that, this entity, and I'll get to the Giustra part of it in a moment, this is a close friend of Bill Clintons and somebody he made rich in business deals in Kazakhstan and Colombia, but this entity took in a lot of money. And it doesn't have to disclose its' donors, it then funneled money, like a money laundering outfit, which it is, to the United States.
Rob: In your article you make it clear that because of Canadian Law, they don't have to disclose donors like it's required in the US.
KS: Exactly, so it takes in all this money, and I'll get to who some of the donors are, my understanding, I know who some of the donors are, I shouldn't say my understanding. They won't deny this. But they receive a lot of money, from un-named anonymous donors, and then they sent at least 25 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. I'm told the real number is more in the mid 30s or higher than that. But they acknowledge sending 25 million to the Clinton Foundation but all the money donated is listed as coming from this Canadian entity, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership. So it's like, you know if I am a non-profit and I collect money from Al Capone and John Dillinger, and then I send it to another charity under my name, it looks like, hey if I look like I'm clean, and I'm not a crook like Frank Giustra who is a crook, the you know partner with Bill Clinton in this Canadian entity, it looks like it's clean money, you know. After all it's just coming from Ken Silverstein and I have a good reputation. It doesn't come from John Dillinger and Al Capone. But that's what, this is the way it works. The Clinton Foundation is taking dirty money, it's from the Middle East, from members of the royal family and the dictatorship of Equatorial Guinea and Africa, family members and the former government Jacob Zuma in South Africa, so this Canadian Entity takes dirty money and then cleans it, allegedly, and sends it on to the Clinton Foundation in New York. They should be indicted. Chelsea and Bill are trustees. They are legally responsible for the bad actions of the Clinton Foundation. Hillary used to be a trustee. They all should be indicted and imprisoned. And they should be investigated, not investigated, they should be brought to justice for tax evasion, money laundering and other criminal misconduct, which I believe. Unfortunately you know you have the Obama justice administration and various Obama, you know, the IRS there's a lot of political protection because after all, it is Obama's former Secretary of State. And after all Bill Clinton, I'm sorry, Barack Obama is a huge, he donated his Nobel Peace Prize winnings to the Clinton Foundation. So I'm not sure he's dying for his Justice Department to investigate this. And by the way if you go to my story, at Harper's, all the links are there so you can see, this all put together in a way that is irrefutable. The Clinton Foundation did not comment, this is my third story they have not commented on despite my saying, I'm making very serious allegations of criminal misconduct, you have nothing to say? And guess what, they have nothing to say. So I would urge your listeners to read the story at Harper's. I did a previous story at the New York Observer where I have a column called Washington Babylon about Sidney Blumenthal, one of the many Clinton cronies who's gotten paid by the foundation. And then I also did a story for Byline which is, where I raise money for my investigative reporting, because the state of investigative reporting in this country is so crummy that I have to raise money through social media so if you go to Byline, if anyone wants to google my name and Byline you can find my page at this crowdsourcing site for journalists where I raise money to support this work I do.
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