In what may be the latest bad news for Hillary Clinton, whose various "previous life" scandals - from emails, to Clinton foundation donations - refuse to go away, the Hill reports, citing Fox News, that the FBI has expanded its investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State to determine whether her Clinton Foundation work violated public corruption laws.
As The Hill caveats, the original Fox report is based on accounts by three unnamed sources. With that disclaimer in place, The Hill goes on to cite Fox that "the agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed."
Until now, the FBI's investigation has been focused on the classified information shared in the emails. However, that may change. One of the Fox sources said that the FBI is especially eager to pursue a high-profile public corruption case in the wake of what they believe was overly lenient treatment of former CIA Director David Petraeus — who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor last year for mishandling classified information after it was revealed that he had given classified information to his mistress.
Clinton, who is the front-runner in the Democratic primary has denied knowingly sending or receiving classified information over her private server.
Critics of Clinton have questioned whether her work with her family's foundation during her time as secretary of State may have constituted a conflict of interest, and whether the foundation's donors wielded influence over her while she was in office.
Those critics are likely accurate following a report last week from The Intercept which calculated that according to public disclosures, by giving just 12 speeches to Wall Street banks, private equity firms, and other financial corporations, Clinton made $2,935,000 from 2013 to 2015:
To be sure, without this table the world would not have such exciting photo-ops as the one shown below, to understand just who the next US president is beholden to:
Intercept then added some amusing color to the above tabulation:
Clinton’s most lucrative year was 2013, right after stepping down as secretary of state. That year, she made $2.3 million for three speeches to Goldman Sachs and individual speeches to Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments, Apollo Management Holdings, UBS, Bank of America, and Golden Tree Asset Managers.
The following year, she picked up $485,000 for a speech to Deutsche Bank and an address to Ameriprise. Last year, she made $150,000 from a lecture before the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
To put these numbers into perspective, compare them to lifetime earnings of the median American worker. In 2011, the Census Bureau estimated that, across all majors, a “bachelor’s degree holder can expect to earn about $2.4 million over his or her work life.” A Pew Research analysis published the same year estimated that a “typical high school graduate” can expect to make just $770,000 over the course of his or her lifetime.
This means that in one year — 2013 — Hillary Clinton earned almost as much from 10 lectures to financial firms as most bachelor’s degree-holding Americans earn in their lifetimes — and nearly four times what someone who holds only a high school diploma could expect to make.
All of the above excludes the over one hundred millions others have spent to legally bribe and otherwise purchase goodwill from the person many anticipate will be the next US president.
Which brings us to square 1: if the FBI does indeed crack down on Hillary for "violating public corruption laws", then it will have to likewise charge every other US politician, all of whom are nothing more than muppets for sale to the highest corporate bidder. It just so happens that the biggest source of funds when purchasing political goodwill, happens to be on Wall Street, which also explains the unprecedented bailout of Wall Street during the Great Financial Crisis.