Vincent J. Curtis
22 Oct 2016
Before Hillary Clinton formally announced her candidacy for
president, she was still collecting millions of dollars from foreign
governments. In the case below, she was
preparing to receive approximately $12 million from the King of Morocco.
As Huma Abedin, one of Hillary’s closest confidants,
explains below, the Moroccans believed they were being hit up by the Clintons
for the money. The scheme involved the
Moroccans going out of their way to host a conference of the Clinton Global
Initiative, and in return for the upset and for future considerations, the Moroccans
would be seen hosting a visit from the next president of the United States.
This was a clear case of quid pro quo. The Moroccans host the conference and give
the Clintons $12 million, and they get to bask in the prestige among their
people and get future considerations from the next president.
From:huma@hrcoffice.com
To: robbymook2015@gmail.com, john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-01-18 13:57
Subject:
Re: FYI CGI Africa
Thank you for sharing. Just to give you some context, the
condition upon which the Moroccans agreed to host the meeting was her
participation. If hrc was not part if it, meeting was a non-starter. CGI also
wasn't pushing for a meeting in Morocco and it wasn't their first choice. This
was HRC's idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent
believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed
approx $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting. It will
break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it
in the past few months. She created this mess and she knows it.
________________________________
Came up on our call with HRC. John flagged the same issues we
discussed, Huma. HRC said she's sitll considering.
Because Hillary had not yet announced and was no longer
Secretary of State, technically this arrangement involves no direct breach of
ethics. Hillary was in a position to
stiff the Moroccans if she didn’t run.
But she was going to run, and the occasion for this email
exchange between Abedin and Hillary’s campaign-in-waiting was that the CGI
event was going to happen in May, 2015, after
she had announced. Then the spectre
of an ethics problem would arise. That
is what had the campaign team so exercised.
Hillary’s pathological obsession with money was getting the
better of her, and her campaign team noticed.
Huma Abedin was tired of being caught in the middle, and her frustration
came out in her email to the team, calling the situation a “mess,” and openly blamed
Hillary for it.
To put some context to this, the Islamic religion has no
tradition of giving charity to non-Muslims.
Zakat is Muslim alms-giving
and is considered as a religious obligation.
It is intended to contribute to Jihad or to relieve suffering. Muslims gain no religious benefit from alms
giving to non-Muslims.
Baksheesh, on the
other hand, is like tipping, or political corruption or bribery. This is form of giving also quite well known
in the Middle East. When the King of
Morocco, a deeply Muslim country, offered the CGI $12 million, it would be with
baksheesh in mind, not zakat.
And that would explain why the Moroccans would be so upset at Hillary
Clinton not appearing at the event because it would be a clear sign that they
were being played.
When you look at all the so-called charitable contributions
to the Clinton Foundation from the Middle Eastern countries - Saudi Arabia and
Qatar particularly - these donations were understood in the Middle East as baksheesh, not zakat. The $ 1 million
birthday gift that Qatar wanted to give Bill Clinton was baksheesh.
The Middle Eastern potentates were able to look like big-shots
on the world stage to their populations by being seen giving “tips” to
western charities run by the Clintons, or to the Clintons themselves. The difference between zakat and baksheesh is
why money ostensibly for Haiti was given to the Clinton Foundation and not to
Haitian relief directly. Giving zakat to Haiti makes no sense to
Muslims, and they would likely feel pretty aggrieved at alms being given to
western, Christian nations instead of to Muslims.
While western eyes see nothing wrong with Muslims countries
giving charity for Haitian relief, Middle Eastern countries certainly
would. They were giving baksheesh so far as they were concerned,
and the Clintons and Huma Abedin understood that. That is why Abedin spoke of china breaking at
backing out late in the game, and calling it a “mess.”
Muslims don’t like being played for suckers by westerners. The Moroccan affair may not be seen as a quid
pro quo in American eyes, but it sure was supposed to be in Middle
Eastern. Maybe it’s okay to us that
Hillary could stiff the Moroccans, but word gets around diplomatic circles, and
the ethics of the thing stinks.
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