Returning to the 'Scene of Crime'? Hillary & Bill Clinton Back in Politics Amid Ukraine Crisis
15:52 GMT 11.03.2022 (Updated: 13:44 GMT 25.02.2024)
© REUTERS / Lucy Nicholson
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It is hardly a coincidence that Hillary and Bill Clinton have resumed their political activity amid the current crisis in Eastern European given the role they played in Washington's relations with the post-Soviet space and Ukraine, in particular, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel.
Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton laughed and said "no" when asked whether she is considering throwing her hat in the ring in 2024 by MSNBC on Tuesday. Still, observers from both sides of the US political aisle are continuing to speculate about a possible presidential bid by the ex-secretary of state.
Hillary and Bill's announcement of the revival of the Clinton Foundation's Global Initiative, a fundraising vehicle said to cope with urgent international issues, has added to the fuss. Bloomberg notes that the Clinton Global Initiative "hosted annual meetings from 2005 to 2016, with the final meeting held less than two months before Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump". Following Clinton's defeat, the Clinton Foundation received just $16.3 million in contributions in 2020, down from its 2016 peak of $62.9 million, prompting suspicions that it was used for apparent pay-to-play schemes. Meanwhile, the Global Initiative's gathering is scheduled for September 2022, apparently signalling the Clintons' return to politics, observers believe.
"Clearly, Hillary Clinton has decided to run for president again and aims to use 'her' foundation and its supposed good works as a platform to raise financial and other support for another expensive political campaign", says Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst, who has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for the last several years.
According to Ortel, the Clinton Foundation as well as the Clinton Global Initiative have not been lawfully organised and managed and were largely used as an enrichment tool in influence peddling schemes.
"Donald Trump was relentlessly attacked by Democrat Attorney General Letitia James who succeeded in shutting the Trump Foundation down and fining the Trump family for offenses that seem trifling compared to the gigantic charity frauds perpetrated by Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton with their false-front, porous 'organisations' that never have made complete and truthful declarations under penalties of perjury or been properly audited since the parent 'charity' was incorporated on 23 October 1997 while operating, illegally, from Washington, DC and New York beginning in 1998", the Wall Street analyst says.
Special Counsel Durham's Probe
The announcement of a new Clinton Global Initiative gathering also coincided with a series of bombshell revelations by Special Counsel John Durham, who is looking into the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. Durham's court filings indicate that Hillary Clinton campaign operatives played a significant role in peddling and, apparently, creating the Trump-Russia "collusion" story, which eventually turned out to be a big nothing burger.
According to Ortel, Hillary Clinton had a motive for trying to dump Trump: apparently, she feared that her influence peddling schemes as well as potential financial machinations could come to light under Trump. Indeed, the former US president repeatedly vowed to put her behind bars during his 2015/2016 election campaign.
Earlier, the US mainstream media reported that Durham had widened the scope of his probe by looking into the FBI's investigations into the Clintons' charity. Two Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, Larry Doyle and John Moynihan, who delivered testimony before the US Congress on the charity in 2018, confirmed that the special counsel had communicated with them.
However, as Hillary and Bill Clinton have returned to the US political stage, US mainstream media launched an attack on Special Counsel Durham's disclosures, claiming that "there is no there there."
British soldiers take part in a major drill as part of NATO's "enhanced forward presence" (EFP) deployment in Poland and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, at the Tapa estonian army camp near Rakvere on February 5, 2022
© AFP 2023 / ALAIN JOCARD
The Clintons' Role in the Ukraine Crisis
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton subjected former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party to harsh criticism, claiming on MSNBC on 25 February that they were responsible for the unfolding Ukrainian crisis and "enabling" the Russian special operation by "giving aid and comfort" to Vladimir Putin.
According to Ortel, Hillary Clinton has once again resorted to blame shifting, since one of the root causes of the current Ukraine crisis is NATO's post-Cold War eastward expansion which, according to then-Senator Joe Biden's 1997 notion, tremendously irritated and threatened Russia.
"According to multiple, credible reports, Bill Clinton pushed to expand NATO eastward starting by 1994 despite assurances by him and by other American leaders that the United States would not, in fact, do so", says Ortel.
Bill Clinton actively lobbied for the inclusion of three former Warsaw Pact members – Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic – into NATO at the 1999 Washington summit, despite 50 prominent foreign policy experts warning the US president in June 1997 that the expansion of NATO would eventually "unsettle European stability". US career diplomat with expertise in Russia affairs and incumbent CIA Director William Burns noted in his memoir that Bill Clinton's move was "premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst".
"Moreover, when countries in the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were at their weakest, leading donors to both established political parties pushed hard to snap up state-owned properties at fire-sale prices, enriching themselves and creating oligarchs in the process", says Ortel. "The globalist push, incorporating naked contempt for national laws, was well advanced by 2013".
Police officers and opposition supporters are seen on Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in Kiev, where clashes began between protesters and the police. (File)
© Sputnik / Andrey Stenin
2014 'Euromaidan' Coup in Ukraine
In September 2013, Hillary and Bill Clinton participated in the Yalta European Strategy conference along with other global leaders in Crimea hosted by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, one of the Clintons' longtime donors. They were calling for bringing Ukraine into the EU orbit and ridiculed Russia's opposition to it, even though Ukraine's Declaration of Sovereignty affirmed the country's permanent non-aligned status.
In February 2014, the US-backed Ukrainian opposition and neo-Nazi elements carried out a coup d'etat and ousted democratically elected President Victor Yanukovich after the latter rejected a pending EU association agreement and leaned towards an economic union with Russia. US Democratic and Republican politicians openly signalled their support for the regime change in Ukraine, with then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland discussing in detail the composition of the post-coup interim government with Geoffrey Pyatt, then-US ambassador to Ukraine.
"One important theatre of interest was and remains the largest landmass bordering Western Europe other than Russia", says Ortel. "So, certainly Teams Clinton and Obama saw potential long-term gains cementing Ukraine in the Western orbit while likely also profiting personally in the process".
So, it was the Clintons and Obama who sowed the seeds of destruction in Ukraine, resulting in the ascendance to power of radical nationalist elements in Ukraine, which had been harshly lambasted by the US mainstream media and the European Parliament before and immediately after the 2014 February regime change, according to the analyst.
"For the moment, until cooler heads examine history fairly from 1988 to the present, Russia is the devil de jour and not those who foist unregulated globalism upon us, looting vast sums, exacerbating structural problems and proclaiming themselves virtuous saviours, all at the same time", Ortel concludes.
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