The smoking gun email: Clinton Foundation was warned it was breaking the law

(Freedom.news) If you were waiting around for the “smoking gun” email that would finally lay bare the fact that the Clinton Foundation was being run not as a charity but as a blatant political pay-for-pay apparatus, your wait is over.

At the weekend, Zero Hedge published an extensive review of an email that was released by WikiLeaks detailing a legal review of the foundation in 2008 that proves, once and for all, it was being used by Bill and Hillary Clinton as a personal wealth enhancement vehicle and a tool to cultivate and expand political ties, power and influence.

To wit: This  confidential memo from prominent New York lawyer Kumiki Gibson to Clinton Foundation Chairman Bruce Lindsey (and former Bill Clinton attorney) which was performed as part of an inside audit of the foundation. In short, the memo confirms that the so-called Clinton charity was engaged in activity and unethical practices that ran afoul of the law.

When Gibson, who according to her resume ” was counseling the William J. Clinton Foundation, Zero Hedge reported, on “structural, legal and compliance issue” from May 2008 through January 2014, wrote that the reason for the Nov. 10, 2008, memo was to “set forth the findings of my review of the Legal and Human Resources Departments of the William J. Clinton Foundation (“Foundation”) and those pertaining to other areas of the Foundation revealed during this review, and my recommendations to the Foundation based on this review.”

In all, the review found a number of serious reservations about the long-term viability of the foundation, which she described as “more like a political operation” than a “professional, strategic, and sustainable corporation committed to advancing its overall mission,” especially if/when Bill Clinton were to ever depart and “the Foundation has to rise and/or fall on its own name and work only.”

In particular:

While the Foundation has grown impressively over the past several years, it has a number of fundamental organizational challenges and deficiencies that undermine its effectiveness, expose it to significant risk, and, ultimately, threaten its long-term survival.  The Foundation (as opposed to its initiatives, which I have not reviewed) operates more like a political operation focused on immediate situations, tasks, and events, as opposed to a professional, strategic, and sustainable corporation committed to advancing its overall mission.  While that may not be a problem while the President is personally involved in the Foundation — and can garner support based on that involvement — it will be a problem when he is no longer involved, and the Foundation has to rise and/or fall on its own name and work only.

Gibson’s outside review further identified problems within the Foundation’s Legal and Human Resource Departments, as well as Bill Clinton’s unwillingness to “allow the Board and CEO to make the changes necessary for it to become sustainable, even great.”

As the summary concludes, “the time for making these changes, if they are desired, could not be better:  The presidential campaign, which distracted some key employees and caused uncertainty among others about the future of the organization, is now over; virtually all of the employees interviewed are anxious for more structure, professionalism, and mission-focus; and funders are expecting the same.”

Now, as troubling as all of that is – Gibson’s review suggests that from the outset the Foundation was really little more than a corporate extension of Bill Clinton’s outsized persona – it had not yet reached the level of illegality. Yet.

But there is more. “Where the alarm bells go off, however, is taking a look at page 9 of the memo, where Gibson does a review of the Foundation’s ‘Legal and HR Departments’, something troubling emerges, which perhaps the FBI may want to take a particularly close look at,” Zero Hedge noted.

In particular:

No matter what the leadership decides about the larger, over-arching question, it must act immediately to bring the Foundation into compliance with the law and standards that govern not-for-profits, and must create strong legal and HR offices so to prevent any lapses in the future. 

This essentially means that, at the time the memo was written at least, the Clinton Foundation was operating outside of the law and was not in compliance with standards governing not-for-profit charities.

Some of what Gibson found include:

• The Foundation lacks important policies and procedures and a real process to ensure compliance, resulting in increased risks, confusion, conflicting (and perhaps arbitrary) decisions, and inefficiencies.
• The Foundation does not have a record retention policy, and the procedures currently utilized in Harlem may violate the law.
• It is unclear whether lower level employees actually meet the definition of exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
• Processes and employment decisions are made on an ad hoc basis.  
• Staff complained about the lack of comprehensive and/or written policies and procedures.
• Staff complained about the lack of a real complaint and/or whistleblower policy.

And there were other violations as well.

“It is illegal for tax-exempt non-profit foundations like the Clinton Foundation to be linked with partisan political events as described in the review report,” Zero Hedge noted.

Indeed.

While none of this is liable to change the minds of sycophantic voters who are “ready for Hillary” no matter how large of a criminal enterprise she and her husband are running, hopefully it will finally give enough pause to the fence-sitters, who now know with certainty that the Democratic nominee’s “charity” has never been anything but an influence-peddling, pay-for-pay “political operation” that is not likely to survive the death of its founder…because it’s not a real charity.

More:

• This Law Professor’s Suggestion To Obama Is Exactly What’s Wrong With Today’s Democratic Party
• America’s Colleges And Universities Are Indoctrinating Students To Be Lifelong Pansies Who Can’t Stand Up For Themselves
• 7 Reasons Why Keeping Hillary Clinton From Appointing Supreme Court Justices Is The Most Important Thing This Election Cycle

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