Talk about bad hair days . . . Hillary Clinton is having a bad scandal month.
The scandal involving yet-another campaign donor skipping the country after charges of illegal activities and criminal convictions is par for the Clinton style of politics.
The fact that it is again linked to China is alarming.
One would think the Democrats are getting tired of the Arkansas dynasty and all that it brings to the forefront of American justice. Yet, Hillary has another major donor linked to China scandals that few talk about. Former Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz has made massive donations to the Democrat Party and its associated 527 liberal advocacy groups. In fact, Schwartz has donated nearly $4 million to the DNC and Hillary Clinton.
Schwartz has a long donation history with the Clintons. In a September 1994 memo to then President Clinton, Harold Ickes, White House chief of staff, informed him that Schwartz could be used to raise campaign donations “in order to raise an additional $3,000,000 to permit the Democratic National Committee to produce and air generic TV/radio spots as soon as Congress adjourns.”
Ickes then urged Clinton to invite Schwartz to the White House “to impress [him] with the need to raise $3,000,000 within the next two weeks.” In another memo, Ickes informed Clinton that Schwartz “is prepared to do anything he can for the administration.” Between October 1995 and March 1996, as Clinton mulled over whether to ignore State, Justice, and Defense Departments’ reasons against granting Loral waivers to export advanced military technology to China, Loral Chairman Bernard Schwartz injected more than $150,000 into the DNC’s coffers.
In 1996, President Clinton moved the oversight of satellite exports from the State and Defense Departments to the Commerce Department. After Clinton’s decision to lift the ban in Loral’s case and to allow the exportation of the company’s technology to the Chinese military, Loral CEO Schwartz handed over an additional $300,000 to the DNC.
Yet, in 1994 President Clinton personally authorized Schwartz to meet with a key Chinese politico — Commissioner Shen Roujun. It is here the story gets real interesting.
There are those who claim that the Clinton administration only lied to the world about sex. The claims are wrong because I was a witness to the smashing of the biggest Clinton lie. I am not a lawyer but I have won three out of four cases brought before a federal court. The wins were against the best lawyers that the government could buy. The victories also came at a cost, not to me, but to the credibility of the U.S. government and the Clinton presidency.
The first and most damaging lie that the Clinton lawyers made was that the Chinese commissioner, Shen, was a civilian representative of the communist government. This claim, and the accompanying claim of personal and business privacy made on behalf of Loral and Bernard Schwartz, was made before Federal Judge Robert Payne.
The claim was part of an elaborate effort to deny access to over 1,000 pages of information dealing with Shen and his so-called civilian organization, the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND).
When the Clinton lawyers finished I, in turn, dropped a complete bio of Gen. Shen Roujun on Payne's desk. The dossier on Shen included his current military status and details about COSTIND, the military unit he was in.
Shen was not only second in charge of COSTIND but the unit itself is run entirely by and for the Chinese army. It is charged with obtaining advanced military technology for Chinese nuclear weapons. To say that Payne was upset is an understatement. While many judges facing Clinton administration lawyers took lying for granted, Payne threatened to lock all of the U.S. government attorneys up and throw away the key if he did not have the 1,000 pages of withheld materials on his desk in 48 hours.
Over 900 pages of those documents made it to me.
One such document was quite revealing. In a May 3, 1996 letter signed by the CEOs of Hughes, Lockheed, and Loral, the three executives expressed their thanks directly to Bill Clinton. “In October of last year we wrote to you asking you to complete the transfer of responsibility for commercial satellite export licensing to the Department of Commerce. Your administration recently announced it intention to do just that.
“We greatly appreciate this action which demonstrates again your strong commitment to reforming the U.S. export control system,” states a letter signed by Hughes CEO Armstrong, Lockheed CEO Norman Augustine, and Loral CEO Bernard Schwartz.
The rest of the story is history.
Shen got the technology and even played a personal role in the following charges of illegal exports against Hughes, Lockheed and Loral. China has advanced nuclear tipped missiles that now work.
In January 2002, Loral reached a settlement with the U.S. government in a case relating to the company’s involvement in passing U.S. military secrets to the Chinese military. Loral agreed to pay a civil fine of $14 million to the State Department without admitting or denying the government’s charges.
Bernard Schwartz has claimed repeatedly that his donations were not a quid pro quo and they did not buy his way into the Clinton White House. Will Hillary return his money and end any further questions to her integrity or will she — true to form — keep the money and remain silent?
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