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This insight is courtesy of our special contributor, Jim O’Brien. For more of Jim’s work, please check out baconbooksandbullets.com.
Very loudly, during the vice presidential debate, Democrat Tim Kaine vigorously defended the Clinton Foundation against charges of corruption and pay-to-play schemes leveled by Republican Mike Pence. The GOP V.P. pick noted the so-called “charity” has taken millions of dollars from foreign sources — the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jamaica, Bahrain, Brunei and Germany to name a few — many of those donations coming while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
Very quietly, on September 1st — only weeks before that V.P. debate — the most respected charity ratings organization finally chose to provide the Clinton Foundation a highly favorable rating. Here’s what our investigation of that “coincidence” has turned up.
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When it did, curiously, provide a rating to the foundation, Charity Navigator gave the controversial non-profit the highest possible score – four out of four stars. Normally, receiving a rating is not a big deal. But interestingly, Charity Navigator was somehow unable to provide the Clinton Foundation a rating in the past two years.
In fact, Charity Navigator’s own website posted the following warning about the Clinton Foundation as recently as five weeks ago: “We had previously evaluated this organization, but have since determined that this charity’s atypical business model cannot be accurately captured in our current rating methodology.”
Worse, the unverifiable means of collecting foreign donations gave concern to this organization whose mission is to evaluate how supposedly “legitimate” charities conduct business for the purpose of carrying out their missions. Consequently, not only did Charity Navigator decline to rate the Clinton Foundation, it actually had it on its fraud “Watchlist.”
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Then something changed.
According to Charity Navigator, the release of key financial documents — purportedly in the interest of “transparency” — led to the sudden about-face in the organization’s posture toward the Clinton Foundation. However, there is a problem with Charity Navigator’s explanation — a big problem.
As late as November 2015, Charity Navigator considered the Clinton Foundation a risk and advised potential donors of that negative assessment. That was based on the Clinton Foundation’s 2014 Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) independent audit coupled with financial disclosures provided by the foundation that not only bears the Clinton name but also has intimate connections with Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.
Here is the problem: neither PWC nor the Clinton Foundation issued a 2015 audit. There is a 2015 Annual Report, but it is based on 2014’s financial numbers. If you review the Clinton Foundation’s own website you will not find a single financial document for 2015.
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In other words, nothing appears to have changed in the financial reporting between the time that the Clinton Foundation was first placed on a watch list and then was provided a top rating nearly a year later. There’s nothing to show or suggest the rating organization actually had or obtained new documents to justify its change regarding the Clinton Foundation.
So why would Charity Navigator all of a sudden choose to say very nice things about the Clinton Foundation in the absence of any new information?
Perhaps it was a $2 million donation provided to Charity Navigator by the Clinton Global Initiative to run through 2016.
According to the AP, the Clinton Global Initiative announced that a previously provided donation set to expire in 2014 was extended to Charity Navigator through 2016. However, shortly after being questioned by the AP, the Clinton Global Initiative removed all references to Charity Navigator, except to tout its recent ratings win.
Thus, yet again, the Clinton Foundation seems to get an interesting – in the form of a politically beneficial rating – from an organization that may have gotten a financial incentive whose receipt was, to say the least, curiously timed.
Just in time for the vice presidential debate… just in time for the next presidential face-off… just in time for the election.
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