Politics
Bill Clinton Fuming The Truth Coming Out About Haitian Funds Being Used To Fund His Daughter’s Wedding
Published
7 years agoon
(Via Zerohedge)
Former President Bill Clinton lashed out on Twitter Saturday in response to accusations that daughter Chelsea Clinton used Clinton Foundation funds to pay for her wedding, calling it a “personal insult to me, to Hillary, and to Chelsea and Marc,” referring to son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky.
Bill was triggered after controversy surrounding the Clinton Foundation’s involvement in Haiti was rehashed following a tweet by Chelsea Clinton – criticizing President Trump’s alleged use of the word “shithole” in reference to several impoverished countries, including Haiti – which the Clintons have a long and sordid history of screwing over.
In response to Chelsea Clinton’s tweet that “Immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and the 54 countries in Africa likely helped build your buildings,” conservative journalist Paul Joseph Watson brought up claims revealed in an email published by WikiLeaks that the Clinton Foundation used money designated for Haiti relief towards Chelsea Clinton’s wedding:
Linked at the bottom of Bill Clinton’s tweet is a Washington Post article, “fact checking” a 2012 email published by WikiLeaks sent from long-time Bill Clinton aide, who became notorious in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election for his extensive insider revelations on the true nature of the Clinton Foundation, as leaked by WikiLeaks, Doug Band to John Podesta, in which Band urges Podesta to speak with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about “The investigation into her [Chelsea Clinton] getting paid for campaigning, using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade, taxes on money from her parents..”
Hilariously, the WaPo “fact check” Bill Clinton links to relies on the suggestion that Doug Band lied to John Podesta about Chelsea due to “bad blood” – after Band had left the Clinton Foundation to start Teneo Holdings.
Band appears to be alleging Chelsea Clinton engaged in some inappropriate use of Clinton Foundation “resources” — whatever that is — for her 2010 wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. Clearly, there’s some bad blood between Chelsea Clinton and Band, who had left the foundation in 2011 to start his own company, Teneo Holdings. -WaPo
WikiLeaks points out that while Bill Clinton’s tweet says no Clinton Foundation “funds” were used on Chelsea’s wedding, Doug Band uses the word “resources.”
In addition to Chelsea’s wedding, WikiLeaks emails also revealed that husband Marc Mezvinsky used Clinton Foundation connections to raise money for his hedge fund.
In a Jan. 2012 email to Podesta, Mills and current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Band wrote that Mezvinsky invited “several potential investors” for his hedge fund “and a few current business ones” to a foundation poker night fundraiser he had been planning.
“I assume all are contributing to the foundation, which of course isn’t the point,” Band wrote. “The entire plan of his has been to use this for his business.”
In the same email, Band — referring to Chelsea Clinton by her initials — wrote that Mezvinsky “has CVC making some calls for him to get mtgs with some clinton people.”
And, in a Nov. 2011 memo released Sunday, Band wrote that major Clinton Foundation donor Marc Lasry was “assisting Marc Mezvinsky – Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky’s husband – in raising money for his new fund.” -Politico
Who is Doug Band?
Band, 45, was a longtime personal assistant to Bill Clinton, and considered the “key architect” of the Clinton post-presidency; helping to create the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) which allowed the Clintons to accept foreign aid. Band left the Clinton Foundation in 2011 to form investment banking and advisory firm, Teno Holdings, along with Hillary Clinton’s top fundraiser for her 2008 campaign, Declan Kelly.
Of note, Band negotiated with the Obama administration for the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State:
Inside the Obama transition, the intense vetting for the Clintons, dubbed by some as “the project,” is being handled by a small circle of close advisers to each side. Representing the Clintons are: Cheryl Mills, a former Clinton administration official and top aide to Sen. Clinton during her presidential bid; Doug Band, counselor to Mr. Clinton; and Bruce Lindsey, chief executive of the William J. Clinton Foundation. Obama transition chief John Podesta, and his deputy, Todd Stern, are spearheading the discussions for Mr. Obama. -WSJ
Chelsea vs. Doug
As we wrote in October, 2016 – with each new WikiLeaks dump, the rabbit hole in the feud between Chelsea Clinton and Doug Band seemed to grow a little deeper. In a November 11, 2011 email from Chelsea to John Podesta, Cheryl Mills and the Clinton Foundation lawyers – Chelsea clearly lists out her issues with Clinton aides Doug Band, Justin Cooper and someone referred to only as “Hannah,” which is presumably Hannah Deletto, Director of Membership at the Clinton Foundation.
Among other things, the email alleges that Justin Cooper installed spyware on Bill Clinton’s computer in order to monitor his email traffic, that both Justin Cooper and Hannah Deletto stole “significant sums of money” from the Clintons and that Doug Band / Teneo “hustled business at CGI.”
Band, meanwhile, had a bad habit of being brutally honest over email about “spoiled brat” Chelsea… The following example comes from January 2012 when Band forwards a complimentary email from Chelsea (aka “Diane Reynolds”) essentially calling her a two-faced backstabber.
She sends me one of these types of emails every few days/week
As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far
A kiss on the cheek while she is sticking a knife in the back, and front
Of course, this wasn’t the first time Band intimated his true feelings about Chelsea to Podesta. Just a couple of months earlier, in November 2011, Band sent the following email after Chelsea expressed her views that Band’s firm, Teneo, created potential conflicts of interest in going to State Department officials to seek assistance for clients, including MF Global.
“She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she’s doing because she, as she has said, hasn’t found her way and has a lack of focus in her life. I realize she will be off of this soon but if it doesn’t come soon enough….”
After that, the situation escalated to the point that Band sent the following email two days later saying that Chelsea had pushed Clinton Foundation COO, Laura Graham, to the brink of suicide. Within the email Band describes an encounter in which he received a “late night” call from Graham who was:
“…on staten island in her car parked a few feet from the waters edge with her foot on the gas pedal and the car in park. She called me to tell me the stress of all of this office crap with wjc and cvc as well as that of her family had driven her to the edge and she couldn’t take it anymore.”
Chelsea, meanwhile launched an internal investigation into the Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation, according to a January, 2012 email Doug Band sent to John Podesta:
I just received a call from a close friend of wjcs who said that cvc told one of the bush 43 kids that she is conducting an internal investigation of money within the foundation from cgi to the foundation
The bush kid then told someone else who then told an operative within the republican party
The Clintons vs. Haiti
Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton’s feud aside, the Clintons have a long and sordid history with Haiti, including;
Hillary Clinton’s State Department pressured Haiti to suppress their minimum wage in sweatshops in order to benefit US clothing manufacturers
factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.
To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.
A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
-The Nation
Clinton Foundation donors were were allegedly handed government contracts to clean up in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake:
Bill Clinton intervened in the jail sentence of Laura Silsby, a convicted child trafficker who attempted to smuggle 33 children out of Haiti.
Of note, Huma Abedin was constantly forwarding Hillary Clinton articles on Silsby’s organization.
Hillary and Bill Clinton took an extraordinary interest in Silsby’s case from the moment she was arrested and almost immediately stepped in on her behalf. The Harvard Human Rights Journal stated that one of Bill Clinton’s first acts as special envoy for the United Nations in Haiti “was to put out the fire of a child abduction scandal involving American citizens.” On February 7th, 2010, The Sunday Times reported that Bill Clinton had intervened to strike a deal with the Haitian government, securing the release of all co-conspirators except for Silsby. Prosecutors ultimately sought a six-month sentence in Silsby’s case, reducing charges for conspiracy and child abduction to mere “arranging irregular travel.” A shockingly light penalty given the circumstances of her arrest, which would likely not have been possible but for the intervention of the Clintons in Silsby’s case. -Disobedient Media
And the attorney who represented Laura Silsby? Convicted human trafficker Jorge Puello Torres.
SANTO DOMINGO, March 19 (Reuters) – A Dominican Republic man who acted as legal adviser to a group of U.S. missionaries held for several weeks in Haiti on child kidnapping charges has been arrested in Santo Domingo, local police said on Friday. Jorge Puello Torres, wanted by El Salvador as a suspect in a human trafficking ring, was detained at a car wash in the city late on Thursday, a spokesman from the Dominican Republic’s police anti-narcotics unit said. He was arrested in the Dominican Republic’s capital on a warrant issued by Interpol, the international police organization. (reuters)
Oddly, a former Haitian government official set to expose the Clinton Foundation’s misdeeds in Haiti shot himself in the head a week before he was able to testify. Klaus Eberwein, was found dead in a Miami Dade motel room in what examiners ruled a suicide.
According to Miami-Dade’s medical examiner records supervisor, the official cause of death is “gunshot to the head.“ Eberwein’s death has been registered as “suicide” by the government. But not long before his death, he acknowledged that his life was in danger because he was outspoken on the criminal activities of the Clinton Foundation.
Eberwein was a fierce critic of the Clinton Foundation’s activities in the Caribbean island, where he served as director general of the government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social, for three years. “The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace,” Eberwein said at a protest outside the Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan in 2016. Eberwein was due to appear before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors. But this “suicide” gets even more disturbing…
Eberwein was only 50-years-old and reportedly told acquaintances he feared for his life because of his fierce criticism of the Clinton Foundation. His close friends and business partners were taken aback by the idea he may have committed suicide. “It’s really shocking,” said friend Gilbert Bailly. “We grew up together; he was like family.”
Donald Trump’s political journey over the last eight years has been a vivid illustration of modern populism, defying conventional political odds. Starting with his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump, a real estate mogul and reality TV star, harnessed populist sentiments to propel his candidacy. His message resonated with many Americans feeling left behind by globalization and economic shifts, promising to restore jobs, combat what he described as unfair trade deals, and prioritize American interests over international cooperation. This populist wave was marked by his direct communication style, bypassing traditional media to connect with voters through rallies and social media, where he spoke of “draining the swamp” in Washington, suggesting a deep-seated distrust in the political establishment.
The struggle of Trump supporters has mirrored this populist movement, characterized by a sense of alienation from what they perceive as a detached political and cultural elite. This group, often labeled pejoratively by some in the mainstream, found in Trump a voice for their frustrations with immigration policies, economic policies favoring global trade over local jobs, and cultural shifts they felt were imposed without their consent. The Trump family, from Melania’s fashion choices to Ivanka’s political involvement, became symbols of this populist resistance against the perceived elitism of politics. The criticism they faced only deepened the solidarity among Trump’s supporters, who saw in his family a reflection of their own battles against the establishment.
The alt-media ecosystem was instrumental in this populist surge, serving as both a battleground and a bastion. Outlets like Breitbart and Infowars, and later platforms like Parler and Truth Social, became the echo chambers where Trump’s narrative of being a victim of political witch hunts and media bias was amplified. These platforms didn’t just report news; they crafted a narrative where Trump’s every move, from policy to personal tweets, was framed as part of a larger fight against a corrupt system. This interaction between Trump, his supporters, and the alt-media has redefined political discourse, showcasing how populism can harness media, both traditional and digital, to challenge and reshape political norms. Trump’s journey has thus not only defied odds but has also redefined what political success looks like in an era where populism can sway elections and influence policy discussions at the highest levels.
Politics
President Trump Returns to Butler to FIGHT for America First
Published
3 months agoon
October 5, 2024Trump’s Return to Butler, PA: A Symbol of Tenacity and Defiance
Today, former President Donald Trump makes a symbolically charged return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site where his resilience was tested in an unprecedented manner. This visit, on October 5, 2024, is not just another campaign stop but a poignant reminder of his enduring “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” mantra, which has become emblematic of his political persona.
10/4 | BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA… pic.twitter.com/YradtyIbMR
— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) October 5, 2024
A Historical Backdrop
On July 13, 2024, Butler was thrust into the national spotlight when an assassination attempt was made on Trump during a rally. Surviving with a mere graze to his ear, Trump’s immediate response was to raise his fist, a moment captured in what has now become an iconic image, symbolizing his defiance against adversity. This incident didn’t just scar him physically but also galvanized his supporters, turning Butler into a shrine of sorts for Trump’s resilience.
The Symbolism of the Return
Trump’s decision to return to Butler is laden with symbolism. Here’s why this visit resonates deeply with his campaign ethos:
- Defiance in the Face of Danger: Returning to the site where his life was threatened underscores Trump’s narrative of not backing down. It’s a physical manifestation of his “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” ethos, showcasing his refusal to be intimidated by violence or political opposition.
- Political Theatre and Momentum: This rally serves as a masterstroke in political theatre, aiming to convert the attempt on his life into a rallying cry for his supporters. It’s an attempt to reignite the fervor seen in the immediate aftermath of the incident, where his campaign saw a surge in support, portraying him as a fighter against all odds.
- Uniting the Base: By revisiting Butler, Trump not only honors the victims of the incident but also uses the location to unify his base. The rally is expected to be a blend of remembrance and a call to action, emphasizing themes of perseverance, security, and defiance against the establishment’s perceived failures.
- A Message of Strength: For Trump, every appearance since the assassination attempt has been an opportunity to project strength. Returning to Butler amplifies this message, suggesting that neither personal attacks nor political challenges will deter his campaign or his message.
The Broader Impact
The “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT” mantra has transcended its initial context, becoming a broader call against what Trump describes as systemic failures, from immigration policies to disaster response, as seen in his critiques of the current administration’s handling of events in North Carolina, echoed in his and his allies’ posts on X.
This return to Butler isn’t just about revisiting the site of a traumatic event; it’s a strategic move to encapsulate his campaign’s spirit in one location, making it a pilgrimage of sorts for his supporters. It represents Trump not just as a politician but as a symbol of resistance and persistence, key themes in his narrative of reclaiming America.
In sum, Trump’s rally in Butler today is more than a campaign event; it’s a testament to his campaign’s core message: a relentless fight against adversaries, be they political opponents, critics, or even those who threaten his life. This event is poised to be a significant moment in the 2024 presidential race, leveraging trauma, resilience, and defiance into political capital.
In an unprecedented move, Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered the nationwide suspension of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, and Brazilian authorities. This decision stems from Musk’s refusal to comply with court orders to appoint a legal representative in Brazil and to suspend certain accounts accused of spreading misinformation and hate speech.
The tension reached a boiling point when Justice Alexandre de Moraes gave X a 24-hour ultimatum to name a representative or face a complete operational shutdown in Brazil. Musk’s response was to close X’s office in Brazil, citing threats of arrest against his staff for non-compliance with what he described as “secret censoring orders.” This move has left millions of Brazilian users in the dark, with the platform going offline across the nation.
The implications of this standoff are manifold. Firstly, it pits the concept of free speech, as championed by Musk, against Brazil’s judicial efforts to curb what it sees as the spread of dangerous misinformation. Critics argue that this is a test case for how far nations can go in regulating global digital platforms. Secondly, the economic impact on X cannot be understated, with Brazil being one of its significant markets.
The situation has also sparked a debate on digital sovereignty versus global internet freedom. While some see Justice de Moraes’s actions as necessary to protect Brazilian democracy, others view it as an overreach, potentially stifling free expression. As X users in Brazil scramble to find alternatives or use VPNs to bypass the ban, the world watches closely to see if this could set a precedent for other nations grappling with similar issues.