Hillary Clinton addressed the horrific shooting at a gay club in Orlando during a speech in Cleveland on Monday, and called out a number of U.S. allies in the Middle East for not doing enough to curtail funding for terrorist groups.
HRC says it is "long past time" for Saudis, Qataris & Kuwaitis "to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations."
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) June 13, 2016
The Saudis, Qataris, and Kuwaitis also donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
- Saudi Arabia: $11-30 million
- Qatar: $1-5 million
- Kuwait: $5-10 million
Qatar and Kuwait both made donations while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state.
The Clintons’ ties to these government extend well beyond their gifts to the foundation. The Saudi royal family also donated $10 million to help fund the construction of Bill Clinton’s presidential library, on top of a $3.5 million gift to the University of Arkansas. Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the longtime director of the Saudi intelligence agency, is a former classmate of Bill Clinton, who was paid $600,000 to give two speeches in Saudi Arabia while Hillary was serving as secretary of state and facilitating a $29 billion arms deal with the Saudi government.
Former president Bill Clinton has praised the Qataris as “intelligent, forward-looking” investment partners for their work with the Clinton Foundation. He also earned between $500,000 and $1 million for two speeches funded by Qatari entities. Qatar was the only foreign government donor to the Clinton Foundation that actively lobbied the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Chelsea Clinton’s chief of staff at the Clinton Foundation previously worked at Tribeca Enterprises, where she managed the company’s “signature partnership” with Qatar.
The government of Kuwait has also paid Bill Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches, including a $500,000 gig in Kuwait City in 2008, and a $175,000 gig at the Kuwaiti ambassador’s residence in 2011, while Hillary was serving as secretary of state.
Emails released by Wikileaks indicate that Hillary Clinton has been criticizing these Middle Eastern governments for their refusal to crack down on terror funding since at least 2009. Needless to say, their records on human rights, and gay rights especially, leave much to be desired. Yet the Clintons have continued to partner with the regimes and have personally profited from these relationships.
Defenders of the Clintons may be tempted to point out the Clinton Foundation is, at least nominally, a “charity,” and the foreign donations should be viewed positively for this reason. It would appear, however, that the Kuwaiti, Saudi, and Qatari governments view the Clinton Foundation as something more than a charity:
Four oil-rich Arab nations, all with histories of philanthropy to United Nations and Middle Eastern causes, have donated vastly more money to the Clinton Foundation than they have to most other large private charities involved in the kinds of global work championed by the Clinton family.
Since 2001, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates gave as much as $40 million to the Clinton Foundation. In contrast, six similar non-governmental global charities collected no money from those same four Middle Eastern countries; the International Committee of the Red Cross was given $6.82 million. Since 2001, these global foundations have raised a staggering $40 billion to $50 billion to fund their humanitarian work.
The existence of foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation has been well-documented in the media. What hasn’t been revealed, however, is the disparity in donations by these four nations, all of which have been criticized by the State Department over the years for a spate of issues ranging from the mistreatment of women to stoking ethnic discord in the flammable Middle East.
Hillary Clinton has refused to say whether Bill would step down from his current role at the Clinton Foundation if she is elected president.
