Book alleges favors for Clinton donors

A book that will be released May 5 purports to show that donors to Hillary Rodham Clinton's family foundation and groups that hired her husband for speaking engagements received government favors while Clinton led the State Department, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Author Peter Schweizer, a former consultant to President George W. Bush, cites as an example "a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor's natural resource investments in the South American nation," the Times said.

The book also says more than $1 million in payments were made to former President Bill Clinton "by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department," according to the Times.

"We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds," Schweizer wrote.

Clinton, who was in Keene, N.H., for her presidential campaign, pushed back against the accusations, dismissing them as political attacks from Republicans eager to gain an early advantage.

"We will be subjected to all kinds of distractions and attacks," she told reporters after an event at a furniture factory. "I'm ready for that. I know that that comes, unfortunately, with the territory."

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon called the book "partisan-fueled fiction," the newspaper said.

Fallon said the book is part of a coordinated attack strategy on Clinton and is "twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories."

Schweizer and a spokesman for HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corp. and is publishing the book, declined to comment.

The Times cited copies of the book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. The newspaper said it, The Washington Post and Fox News "have exclusive agreements with the author to pursue the story lines found in the book."

In a statement emailed by a spokesman later Monday, Washington Post national editor Cameron Barr said about his newspaper's involvement: "We made an arrangement with Peter Schweizer's publisher so we could read his book before publication because we are always willing to look at new information that could inform our coverage. Mr. Schweizer's background and his point of view are relevant factors, but not disqualifying ones.

"What interests us more are his facts and whether they can be the basis for further reporting by our own staff that would be compelling to our readers," Barr said. "There is no financial aspect to this arrangement."

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which includes Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have been briefed on the book's findings, and its contents have already made their way into several of the Republican presidential candidates' campaigns.

Paul has called its findings big news that will make people "question whether she ought to run for president."

Schweizer wrote that from 2001 to 2012, the Clintons' income was at least $136.5 million, using a figure previously reported in The Washington Post.

"During Hillary's years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions" with foreign governments and individuals, he writes. "Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets."

The Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny for accepting foreign donations while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. Last week, the foundation revised its policy to limit foreign donations to the governments of Germany, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. Hillary Clinton stepped down from the organization's board within hours of announcing her campaign.

Schweizer's reporting largely focuses on payments made to Bill Clinton for speeches, which increased while his wife served as secretary of state. He wrote that "of the 13 Clinton speeches that fetched $500,000 or more, only two occurred during the years his wife was not secretary of state."

Information for this article was contributed by Elizabeth Titus of Bloomberg News; by Amy Chozick of The New York Times; and by Lisa Lerer, Ken Thomas and Kathleen Ronayne.

A Section on 04/21/2015

Upcoming Events