The hallmark, the salient feature, of Hillary Clinton’s State Department was its incompetence and its utter corruption. In Clinton’s State Department, the Clinton Foundation called the shots, policy decisions were made that enriched Clinton personally as well as her friends and donors, Clinton loyalists were dual-hatted as State and Foundation employees.

Now it seems that John Kerry has decided that if corruption works for the Clintons it will work for him, too.

More than $9 million of Department of State money has been funneled through the Peace Corps to a nonprofit foundation started and run by Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.

The Department of State funded a Peace Corps program created by Dr. Vanessa Kerry and officials from both agencies, records show. The Peace Corps then awarded the money without competition to a nonprofit Kerry created for the program.

Initially, the Peace Corps awarded Kerry’s group — now called Seed Global Health — with a three-year contract worth $2 million of State Department money on Sept. 10, 2012, documents show. Her father was then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which oversees both the Department of State and the Peace Corps.

Seed secured a four-year extension in September 2015, again without competition. This time, the Peace Corps gave the nonprofit $6.4 million provided by the Department of State while John Kerry was secretary of state.

Seed also received almost $1 million from a modification to the first award, as well as from Department of State funds the group secured outside the Peace Corps.

Even assuming Ms. Kerry’s nonprofit is competent to do the work, and in universe of politically connected nonprofits that is a helluva leap of faith, once John Kerry became secretary of state this grant/contract should have sent off distress signals from State’s procurement office. It is a walking, talking, breathing conflict of interest. What State procurement official is going to decide that there is a better vendor? And who is going to disapprove a massive upward modification of the contract amount? You also have to pity the poor project officer who is supposed to supervise the nonprofit run by the secretary’s daughter.

Assuming that Ms. Kerry’s nonprofit is both competent and incredibly honest you have the inescapable appearance of a conflict of interest and such appearances are violations of federal procurement laws.

But such it the state of the federal government in the Age of Obama. It is a seething, slithering mass of corruption, nepotism, and self-dealing all rolled into a slimy ball and coated with a thick layer of malice and incompetence.