First, another incestuous triangle between then-Commissar Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and yet another big, rich bank:
A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts....
If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.
Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement — an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown.
First came the quid; then came the pro quo:
From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased. Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according the foundation and the bank.
The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.
The Wall Street Journal goes toadyingly out of its way to emphasize that there is no direct evidence of a mutual back-scratching arrangement. But then when has La Clinton Nostra ever been so sloppy as to leave that obvious a trail of bread crumbs to follow, other than Mr. Bill's pecker tracks on Monica Lewinsky's dress? They're consummate professionals at covering up their criminal racketeering and providing themselves with as many layers of separation as necessary to keep themselves out of the slammer. UBS wouldn't be any different.
As continues to be the case, the risk for the Clinton Crime Family isn't legal or criminal, it's political. Sure, the UBS case for a corrupt quid pro quo is "purely" circumstantial, but it is parsecs from being an isolated instance, but part of a well-established pattern. Sixty grand in total contributions increasing tenfold plus seven-figure speaking fees for Sick Willie ever since after Her Nib did the Swiss Bank a huge favor in her official capacity as "pure coincidence" is an awful lot for even a low-information voter to swallow. It simply contributes to the solidifying, across-the-ideological-spectrum public perception of Hillary as being corrupt, dishonest, and money-grubbing. Which, combined with all her other political handicaps, does not bode well for her even winning the Democrat nomination, much less the forty-fifth presidency itself.
Meanwhile, the Ugly Dutchess's "I neither sent nor received any classified email information in my entire four year tenure at State" howler continues to disintegrate:
Intelligence officials who reviewed the five classified emails determined that they included information from five separate intelligence agencies, said a congressional official with knowledge of the matter.
The public Benghazi email contained information from the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a spy agency that maps and tracks satellite imagery, according to the official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The other four classified emails contained information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, the official said.
No single one of these stories would ever be enough to derail Mrs. Clinton. But the constant drip, drip, drip, drip is steadily, inexorably eroding her electability day by day by day.
What is it Charles Xavier said in the final scene of X-Men Days Of Future Past?:
Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripples, and you change the tide.
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