The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation lies at the center of controversy for former Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) as she runs for President. Last month the country’s most prominent “charity watchdog” put the Clinton Foundation on watch. Now a new report says positively: the Clinton family are working the Clinton Foundation as a combination private piggy bank and slush fund. And if anyone other than the Clintons did this, the Internal Revenue Service would prosecute them.

The Clinton Foundation on charity watch

Charity Navigator keeps a watch list of charities having “issues” that might affect whether you want to give to them. Today (May 17) that list has twenty-one names. Among them:

• The American Red Cross, after some questioned the way they handled disaster relief after Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy. At issue: where did all the money go?
• Vermont Public Television, after several employees called on two senior officers to resign, and they didn’t resign.

On April 26, Charity Navigator put the Clinton Foundation on watch. Charity Navigator directly cites gifts to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments, and from private companies having business pending with the Department of State while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. The New York Post raised another issue: the Clinton Foundation spends a strikingly low fraction of its rake-in on charitable activities.

As The Daily Caller reminds us, Charity Navigator also stopped giving the Clinton Foundation a rating. Why not? Because they can’t rate the foundation. They cite an “atypical business model.” Meaning: the Clinton Foundation does not do things the way Charity Navigator and the rest of us would normally expect.

Unlawful inurement

Enter Charles Ortel, veteran Wall Street financial analyst and investor. Jerome Corsi of WND asked him to look closely at the Clinton Foundation’s financial reports. Mr. Corsi’s exclusive report gives the details of what Mr. Ortel found.

Mr. Ortel’s biggest question: where did seventeen million dollars vanish to? According to Ortel, the Clinton Foundation reorganized a key part of it: the Clinton Health Access Initiative. From 2009 to 2010, CHAI suddenly had about $17 million less in its accounts. Where did that money go?

Nor does Mr. Ortel stop there. The Clinton Foundation failed to file independently audited financial reports. When they do that, they break the law. And Ortel thinks he knows why they did this.

The Clinton Foundation works under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. That section governs public charities and private charitable foundations. If you give to such a foundation, you may deduct the gift from your taxable income. The key: a 501(c)(3) charity must not run itself for the private benefit of its officers or their close relatives or associates. That’s an IRS official no-no.

No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.

Charles Ortel lays it on the line: the Clinton Foundation have filed financial reports full of convenient mistakes, not to say outright lies. And they did it to funnel large amounts of money to the Clintons. (Or to their favorite political causes.)

What difference, at this point, does it make?

Hillary Clinton. Photo: US Department of State

It should make a difference to any voter who cares about what kind of President we want for our country. But it might not matter to enough people. If Charles Ortel has found the truth as he claims, Bill and Hillary Clinton have laundered vast sums from foreign governments and large companies. Not only that, those same givers have deducted those gifts from their taxable incomes. And when they do that, they defraud the government out of revenues the law says it should have. The problem here: selective application of the law. Why should they get away with something the rest of us wouldn’t?

In other words, the Clintons have taken bribes, and aided and abetted the bribers in stealing from the American taxpayer. But what does that matter to a voter with such a penny-ante income that said voter doesn’t even pay taxes as it is? Only what a President Hillary Clinton can do for such a voter, matters. But let a Republican run a foundation like a private piggy bank and slush fund, and they will care about that.

Happily, the American electorate has a year and a half to prove this gloomy assessment wrong.

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