Another day, another instance of the Clintons extorting peons for cash.
The New York Times reports that in 2014 Bill Clinton agreed to appear at a ritzy fundraiser for the Happy Hearts Fund, a school-building charity hosting a gala to mark the tenth anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — but only after the group agreed to write a $500,000 check to the Clinton Foundation:
The former president of the United States agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 event after [Happy Hearts Fund founder Petra] Nemcova offered a $500,000 contribution to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The donation, made late last year after the foundation sent the charity an invoice, amounted to almost a quarter of the evening’s net proceeds — enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia.
Take note of this analysis:
Happy Hearts’ former executive director believes the transaction was a “quid pro quo,” which rerouted donations intended for a small charity with the concrete mission of rebuilding schools after natural disasters to a large foundation with a broader agenda and a budget 100 times bigger.
“The Clinton Foundation had rejected the Happy Hearts Fund invitation more than once, until there was a thinly veiled solicitation and then the offer of an honorarium,” said the former executive director, Sue Veres Royal, who held that position at the time of the gala and was dismissed a few weeks later amid conflicts over the gala and other issues.
Conflicts over the gala? Wonder why.
Press officers for Ms. Nemcova and for the Clinton Foundation said on Thursday that the foundation had not solicited the donation and that the money would be used for projects in Haiti, as yet undetermined.
Right. You know: “Haiti.”