It's Not YOUR Money, Hillary

So we're all sort of caught up in that Harvey Weinstein thing, where the apparently powerful movie mogul (I had never really heard of him, but I rarely go to movies, don't typically watch the Oscars and couldn't care less about the moguls who make them) is accused of abusing female actresses.

A bunch of actresses are coming forward to assert that he did this or that to them, and one has to assume simply by (A) their large number, (B) the risk of industry blacklist, and (C) the fact that people are saying they knew all the time he was a louse, that it it is substantively true, and that Weinstein is a serial abuser of women under his employment power.  Classic workplace sexual harassment, casting couch, all that sort of thing.

This story is big in Hollywood, but not so much in the media.  That would be because Weinstein, along with being a serial abuser of women under his employment control, was a big Democrat donor and a very good friend of the Clintons, even having them rent a house in the Hamptons next to him.  Lots of money, many years.  God forbid a Democrat donor's legal issues get into the Democrat media.

So of course there were some calls, at least on the right and from some of the women abused, for Weinstein's campaign donations to be returned, particularly all the money he gave to Hillary Clinton last year.  People have done that before; when donors are problematic and it looks bad, they returned the donations.

It looked pretty bad when she wouldn't say anything about Weinstein for almost a week after the scandal broke.  I guess it took that long for her handlers to come up with the right statement one makes, when one's friend turns out to be a serial abuser and you probably always knew about it, you know, being married to one and all.  Oh, yeah, and you were supposed to be the "friend of women" and all that too.

So Hillary gets on an interview with a butt-kissing leftist host, and gets asked the logical question -- "Will you return his contributions to your campaign?".  What was her answer to that, you might ask?  Well, it was pretty curious, and if I transcribed it right it was this:

"Well, there's no one to return it to ... [then, in regard to returning the donations by giving them to charity,] of course I will do that; I give 10% [of my income] to charity every year.  This will be part of that."

No one seems to have mentioned, however, that those donations from Weinstein are not her money.  OK, I don't exactly know what the campaign finance rules are regarding funds left over after a completed campaign -- I believe they can roll to a subsequent campaign, maybe -- but they're not personal money.

The interviewer, of course, didn't follow up by asking the obvious questions.  "What do you mean 'no one to return it to'; your campaign should send it back to Weinstein, right?" and then the other obvious one, "How does the donation to charity of campaign donations that were given to the Hillary for President campaign, possibly become part of your personal donation to charity?  That money belongs to the campaign, not to you!  You can't claim a charitable deduction on your taxes and you can't claim any moral credit either."

The former question is a sidelight.  The latter is critical, and raises a real issue.  What, we have to ask if she said that, is Hillary Clinton doing with the other money that is left over in her campaign account?  I mean, people can't just give it to charity and then claim some kind of tax deduction against their own income.

So why did she even mention what she personally claims to give to charity each year?  What relevance does that have?  It has nothing to do with campaign finance at all, and to be clear, even if it did, it essentially, as documented, all went to the Clinton Foundation, which is a cesspool of corruption run by her family and select close family friends.  Charity, yeah, right.

So please, will someone in the press raise that?  Her own words, "It will be part of [my personal charitable contributions to the Clinton Foundation]", are frightening, if in her own mind she sees the campaign, the "Foundation" and her own pocketbook as extensions of each other.    

Please, media.  Jump on this.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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