Chris Wallace's First Question

Amidst all the latest batch of Wikileaks-driven leaked emails from the Hillary Clinton Memorial Archives, we find a curious set of communications while Hillary was Secretary of State that regard Haiti.  These should be an interesting question source for the next debate.

Back in 2011, there was, as you know, a major 7.0 earthquake that struck southern Haiti, devastating Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas.  Many well-intentioned elements immediately did what they could to start a relief effort there, including the Red Cross and other agencies.  The U.S. government got in the act as well, trying to provide some support to the disaster victims.

Of course, when disasters happen, a lot of money is spent on relief.  And when a lot of money is spent, you can expect a lot of snakes and frauds to leap in to try to enrich themselves.

The Clinton family, snakes and frauds themselves, attracts a lot of them as cronies.  We are already aware of that, gleaned from recent revelations showing that Clinton campaign donors and "Foundation" donors were given lucrative contracts for Haitian rebuilding.  We now know that they used that money to build in areas unaffected by the earthquake, as opposed to those who needed it.  We also know that they claimed to be planning 60,000 new jobs to help the Haitian economy recover, but did not even create 10,000, and the few they did create were nowhere near the affected area.

So now we read, in the leaked emails, that there was a curious relationship between the State Department under Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton Foundation, during the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake.  Specifically, those donors wanting Haitian rebuilding contracts would go to the Foundation, who would then contact State Department staffers close to Hillary to try to get contracts for the donors.

The corrupt part of this is that internal State emails would refer to these donors as "FOBs" (friends of Bill) or "HRC friend" (friend of Hillary), so as to make sure their pleas for contracts got properly handled.  As one who lives in the world of Federal contracting, I can tell you that this is simply beyond any previously-known level of corruption, and all the way to indictable action.

So ... in a few days, there will be a debate to be held, the last presidential debate of this election cycle.  The moderator will be Chris Wallace, the long-time journalist from Fox News.

Note that while we have known about the Haiti corruption and donors receiving contracts to work there, we only now -- i.e., since the most recent debate -- gotten these leaks that senior State employees, paid by you and me, were making decisions based on who was or was not a personal friend of Hillary or Bill Clinton.

I don't know if Chris Wallace has planned the questions he will ask Hillary at the debate as of yet.  But I have one that I'd like him to ask her, and I would like to make sure that he gets a legitimate answer (i.e., not to let her go off on Russian hackers, but to be forced to answer the question).  That question is this:

"Mrs. Clinton, we now have evidence that senior officials in the State Department, while you were Secretary right after the Haiti earthquake, were sent emails from the Clinton Foundation on behalf of friends of yours and former President Clinton, who wanted contracts for rebuilding.  We also know that inside State, those friends were referred to as 'friends of Bill' or 'friends of Hillary' as they were seeking contract awards.  Such awards are supposed to be completely made based on open competition.  My question is this -- why would taxpayer-paid employees of the State Department care whether anyone seeking work from the Federal government was a friend of yours?

Do you think that one will get answered?  Or asked?

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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