Have You Received A Thank-You Note From The Clinton Foundation?

I haven’t, and you no doubt haven’t either. In fact, until I read Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s column in the Wall Street Journal this morning I didn’t know I had contributed anything to the Clinton Foundation, and I bet you didn’t know, either. But, as U.S. taxpayers, we have.

The United States contributes millions of dollars every year to the Inter-American Development Bank — $75 million in 2012 and 2013 and $102 million requested in the 2014 budget, according to a Treasury Department report. According to Ms. O’Grady, the IDB confirmed to her that “it made a 2014 donation to the Clinton Foundation of $150,000 for ‘The Future of the Americas Meeting.’ Between 2009 and 2013 it donated another $925,000 to “finance expenses and activities” for the planning and design of ‘7 public policy forums . . . in which leaders on key topics relevant to the work of the Bank were able to exchange ideas, enhance their understanding and forge new and stronger partnerships.’”

But wait; there’s more. Some of you may recall that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State during this period. A few months after she became Secretary, O’Grady reports,

Bill Clinton was named the U.N. special envoy to Haiti. That gave the Clintons a lot of power over U.S. foreign-aid decisions in the small country.

They accumulated more influence after the 2010 earthquake, when Bill was named co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. The State Department began directing parties interested in competing for Haiti contracts to the Clinton Foundation. Being on the right side of Bill matters if you want to benefit from U.S. foreign aid destined for Haiti.

Some of those contracts went to OAS, a Brazilian construction firm.

OAS has been in the news because it is caught up in a corruption scandal centered on Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras. In November Brazilian police arrested three top OAS executives for their alleged roles in a bribery scheme involving inflated contracts and kickbacks. OAS denies the allegations. Closer to home the 2013 OAS donation to the Clinton Foundation deserves attention because of the power that Bill Clinton has in Haiti, where OAS has been awarded IDB contracts.

Oh, one more interesting thing in O’Grady’s column, which is what led to this post in the first place: “The Clinton Foundation lists the Brazilian construction firm OAS and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) as donors that have given it between $1 million and $5 million.”

Perhaps Hillary’s thank-you notes to us (and OAS’s to her) are stored somewhere on her private email server.

Say What?