The Clinton Global Initiative essentially wound down in 2017 because of the drop-off in donations. Gee, why did the donations drop off then? Did potential donors finally realize that they wouldn’t be getting any access to the White House because Hillary Clinton wasn’t going to get in?
But now, Bill Clinton is saying they are restarting the CGI again because the kind of “cooperation and coordination” it created is urgently needed with the pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine, according to the Associated Press.
“It’s only just beginning,” Bill Clinton says about CGI, the AP reports.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has ripped the cover off of longstanding inequities and vulnerabilities across our global community,” Clinton said. “The existential threat of climate change grows every day. Democracy is under assault around the world, most glaringly in Ukraine where Russia has launched an unjustified and unprovoked invasion that has put millions of lives in grave danger.”
The CGI faced scrutiny during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for its significant international donations – which some said could create conflicts of interest.
Now with what’s happening in Ukraine, there’s a ton of money flying back and forth — including billions that governments and companies will be putting out there. That has to be ringing the dinner bell to folks like the Clintons, especially given their prior connections to Ukraine.
As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2015, one of the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation was the foundation of a guy named Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch.
Between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union. [….]
In 2008, Mr. Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a wing of the foundation that coordinates charitable projects and funding for them but doesn’t handle the money. The pledge was to fund a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals “to modernize Ukraine,” according to the Clinton Foundation. Several alumni are current members of the Ukrainian Parliament. Actual donations so far amount to only $1.8 million, a Pinchuk foundation spokesman said, citing the impact of the 2008 financial crisis.
They had a lot of money connections already to Ukraine. So, either money is a need or we’re re-upping for Hillary in 2024 in all this. We already have seen her upping her public engagements, which is another indication she’s got running on her mind. It’s also why she keeps trying to smear President Donald Trump. But she also would have to get around not only Trump, but around the Durham probe. You can tell she was feeling the heat, so much so she had to address it, calling it a “fake scandal,” and even referring to it in her “comeback” speech to the NY Democratic Convention. She even tried to blame it on Fox, neglecting to note it was coming right out of the Durham legal filings. I wrote earlier about another Durham filing that she isn’t going to like, that laid out the Clinton campaign connection to pushing false allegations against Trump.
But Hillary being Hillary, she still hasn’t gotten the message that even if she has the money, even if she managed to skirt the Durham probe, there’s still one final hurdle that she can’t get around — and that’s the American people. She still is the same unlikable, scandal-plagued character they rejected before and that isn’t going to change.