Clinton Charity Remains All About Taking Care of the Clintons

Some things never change. In 2008, the last time Hillary Clinton ran for president, we learned that Clinton charity truly begins at home, and of course it does so with scandal, deception and impropriety:

After earning more than $109 million over eight years, Hillary and Bill took tax write-offs totaling $10.2 million, about 9%, in charitable contributions. Most of that money went to the Clinton Family Foundation, and a portion was distributed to charitable causes.

This is the same Clinton Family Foundation that Hillary failed to disclose as required by the Ethics in Government Act. The foundation was kept off of Hillary’s Senate disclosure forms for six years.

The family foundation is based at the Clintons’ Chappaqua, N.Y., home. Bill Clinton serves as its president, Hillary Clinton as secretary and treasurer, and daughter Chelsea as a director.

Between 2001 and 2006, the Clintons put about $6 million into the foundation. The Clintons took a tax write-off for that money even though the foundation only gave away gave away about $2.5 million to other charities.

The Clinton Family Foundation gave $25,000 to the McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service in Mitchell, S.D., in early 2007. Did that have anything to do with McGovern’s endorsement of Hillary in October?

Now, eight years later, Hillary dumps another eight years of tax information, on a Friday of course, and we see more of the same scandal, deception and impropriety. The 2007 through 2014 tax returns show the Clintons ~~earned~~ made a combined $141 million and paid $43.9 million in taxes for the eight years.

The Clintons used just under $15 million of that $141 million for charitable donations, which is 10.8 percent of their total income. However the vast majority of that — about $14.8 million, or 96 percent, went to the Clinton Family Foundation and another $57,000 went to the Clinton Global Initiative.

According to the Atlantic, we now know that Hillary and Bill earned $47.9 million for speeches in 2013 and 2014:

Friday’s release adds to information from the Clintons’ personal financial disclosure back in May. According to that document, Bill and Hillary Clinton made more than $25 million delivering just over 100 speeches since the beginning of 2014.

The new disclosures include itemized speech income for both Bill and Hillary Clinton in 2013. That year, Bill Clinton gave 41 paid speeches and earned a total of $13.2 million from those speeches. His highest-grossing appearances included a speech to Handelsbanken Capital Markets in Stockholm, for $750,000, and one to Leaders and Company, Ltd. in Abeokuta, Nigeria, for $725,000.

Hillary Clinton also gave 41 speeches in 2013, earning $9.7 million in total speaking fees. Her standard rate appeared to be $225,000 for most speeches; her most expensive ones were an appearance for the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, for which she made $400,000, and one to Beaumont Health System in Troy, Mich., for $305,000.

The most puzzling Clinton income is the $16.5 million Bill Clinton collected from 2010 through 2014 as an “honorary chancellor” of Laureate Education Inc., a massive for-profit college system. What does an honorary chancellor do that is worth that much money?

Don’t forget the Clintons tried to hide how much they actually make from giving speeches and how much foreign money flows into the Clinton Family Foundation. In 2014 the Foundation amended its tax filings for 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. The Amendments were necessary because millions of donations were omitted:

Starting in 2010, the Foundation reported on three consecutive IRS tax returns that it received no donations from foreign government sources. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know how to report them. In prior years, the Foundation reported tens of millions of dollars in such donations. But things changed. Upon becoming Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton promised that the Foundation would stop accepting donations from foreign governments. It turns out there were exceptions, and that the Foundation’s tax filings with the IRS were less than transparent.

Government grants – both domestic and foreign – were blank in 2010, 2011, and 2012. The Foundation says it inadvertently included government grants as part of the reporting of all grants.

The amended returns also fixed the incorrect characterization of the money Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton were paid for speeches in 2010, 2011, and 2012. According to Forbes, The money was originally reported as charitable contributions, but actually, the speech fees were payments for services. That is worth saying again: the speech fees were purely fees-for-services and not donations.

A McClatchy analysis of 10 years of contributions to the Clinton Foundation found that the Foundation had received millions and millions in donations from foreign governments, businesses and nongovernmental organizations worldwide – from Saudi Arabia to Norway:

More than 40 percent of the donors who have contributed more than a $1 million to the Clinton family foundation are based in foreign countries. In total, at least 71 of the 168 donors contributing more than a $1 million each are foreign individuals, governments, businesses and charities.

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a government watchdog group, said “The big worry is that (donors) will want some action or payback.”