William McGurn has this column in the WSJ:
Is there a criminal offense here? Setting up meetings alone does not violate the Hobbs Act, the Supreme Court made clear in the McDonnell case in June. A payment in return for an official act is required. No report of a paper trail on such a bribe is reported yet. Even so, as the Court said of McDonnell's dubious dealings, "There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that."
When a donor had a problem that required the secretary of state's attention, there was Doug Band--a Clinton Foundation exec--emailing Hillary's top staffers at the State Department to ask a favor.Take a June 23, 2009, email from Doug Band to Huma Abedin. In his email Mr. Band noted that the Crown Prince of Bahrain (a "good friend of ours") was asking to see Mrs. Clinton. There are, of course, many ways to be a "good friend," but one sure way would be to contribute between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, as the kingdom of Bahrain had done. Not to mention that the prince had also spent $32 million on a scholarship launched through the Clinton Global Initiative.
Ms. Abedin responded that the prince had sought a meeting through "normal" channels but had been shot down. Less than 48 hours after Mr. Band had asked her, Ms. Abedin reported that "we have reached out through official channels." The meeting was on.
It isn't the only favor Mr. Band requested. A month earlier, he had emailed Ms. Abedin to ask her help in getting an English soccer player a visa to the U.S. The player was supposed to come to Las Vegas for a team celebration, but he needed a special interview with the visa section at the American Embassy in London due to a "criminal charge" against him.
Is there a criminal offense here? Setting up meetings alone does not violate the Hobbs Act, the Supreme Court made clear in the McDonnell case in June. A payment in return for an official act is required. No report of a paper trail on such a bribe is reported yet. Even so, as the Court said of McDonnell's dubious dealings, "There is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that."
Merely staying out of jail while making a fortune corruptly selling access does not strike me as a rousing qualification to be President.
Instead, it strikes me as grounds for serious skepticism about fitness for a job that has even minimal responsibility, eg., Assistant Inventory Manager at Walmart.
The AP story is misleading, as this string of tweets explains better than I can (hopefully I've succeeded in pasting it here).
https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/768551407926534145
Also, this:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/08/25/clinton_foundation_scandal_aids_relief_work_is_a_success.html
But you know, never let the facts get in the way of a good story (i.e., "making a fortune corruptly selling access," and for AIDS drugs for poor children no less).
Oh good grief. First of all, all of the emails that have been disclosed were federal records and should have been handed over when she left office. The fact that she didn't is corruption in and of itself. Second, this is access-peddling, pure and simple. That some may have benefited assumes that what little good the Foundation did could only be done through the Foundation.
Perhaps, had Madame Clinton paid more attention to security in Benghazi and less attention to hooking up donors, America wouldn't have suffered the humiliation of an American diplomat being killed.
Having worked for the feds for a number of years, I think it's pretty clear what was going on with Hillary. She used multiple personal servers to circumvent the disclosure requirements of FOIA that apply to government servers. She wanted to circumvent them principally because the emails show vastly preferred access to fatcat Clinton Foundation donors, including foreign governments.
She also copiously lied about this stuff from the getgo, as Director Comey made clear in his congressional testimony. Then she lied about her lying, when, astoundingly, she said on national TV that Comey had verified her truthfulness.
After even the liberal press guffawed at that one, she backtracked on it, too.
This is where we are in this election.