This past Sunday, ABC’s This Week host George Stephanopoulis played the unexpected role of Hillary defender in an exchange with panelist Mark Halperin who is widely regarded as a liberal voice in Washington.
As the segment developed, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid out a series of criticisms of Mrs. Clinton’s actions at the State Department going as far as suggesting that upon taking the oath of office as Secretary, President Bill Clinton’s speaking fees shot up along with donations to the Clinton Foundation – with some individual donations and financial commitments from foreign nationals, companies and governments approaching $145 million.
Stephanopoulis expect this from the former Republican speaker.
Then Stephanopoulis pivoted to Halperin for what he must have thought would be some kind of rebuttal of Gingrich’s observations but that’s not what he got. Instead, Halperin mirrored Gingrich’s arguments in this tense exchange:
MARK HALPERIN: Imagine if an Assistant Secretary of State had done what Hillary Clinton – what we know Hillary did. They would be out of the State Department.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULIS, THIS WEEK: What things?
HALPERIN: Co-mingling of a family foundation, donations from foreign governments, increased speech fees, and government actions.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULIS: No evidence of government actions.
HALPERIN: We know there were government actions taken, what we don’t know – and this goes to the deleted emails – is what kind of interaction did Hillary Clinton have on her private email account regarding her husband’s speeches and Foundation activities involving foreign donations.
If they hadn’t been so careless at the Foundation, if she hadn’t deleted the emails, if they put somebody out on this show today to answer these questions, I think a lot of this could be put to rest, but none of those things are true.
For the period in question, Mrs. Clinton has already said that she deleted all of her emails from her private server and that her server had been wiped of all data – incriminating or not.
However, new evidence against Mrs. Clinton shows that when she became secretary of state, Bill Clinton’s speaking fees more than tripled. It has also been learned that she failed to disclose a more than $2 million donation to the Clinton Foundation when the Obama administration required her to.
This past week, the Clinton Foundation said that they would be refiling at least five years’ worth of tax returns to correct errors and omissions. Once the amended returns are filed, expect the Washington Press Corp, which has bristled at the lack of access they have been given so far to candidate Hillary, to closely examine what has changes were made and why.
Fox News will continue its’ in depth reporting on all presidential candidates as is the network’s policy.
