https://www.naturalnews.com/049801_donations_Clinton_Foundation_George_Stephanopoulos.html
(NaturalNews) He has billed himself as an unbiased arbiter of news and political events as he has hosted the
Good Morning, America program for
ABC News since leaving his post as the White House Communications Director and campaign advisor for President Bill Clinton.
That alone would have once disqualified George Stephanopoulos from being seriously considered a "journalist" in the normal sense of the word. Times have changed, however, and the legacy news media in America has long since become little more than a revolving door for political hacks on the left and right as they await their next position in a politically friendly administration.
For his part, Stephanopoulos hasn't reentered the Democratic political world officially. Nevertheless, it has become more than obvious that he's been working as a Democratic political operative while masquerading as a journalist for
ABC News with recent revelations that he has been donating large sums of money to the foundation of his former boss.
In a mea culpa to viewers, Stephanopoulos "admitted" his "mistake" but tried to couch it as innocently as possible.
Little of the money went to charity work
"I made charitable donations to the Foundation in support of the work they're doing on global AIDS prevention and deforestation, causes I care about deeply," he said. "I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record. However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my
donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation. I apologize."
As reported by
Politico, Stephanopoulos -- who made donations of $25,000 to the Clinton Family Foundation in 2012, 2013 and 2014 -- "never disclosed this information to viewers, even when interviewing author Peter Schweizer last month about his book 'Clinton Cash,' which alleges that donations to the foundation may have influenced some of Hillary Clinton's actions as secretary of state."
As
NaturalNews has reported and Schweizer has intimated, the foundation is really little more than a slush fund of nearly 200 corporate and foreign donors who were likely less interested in its charitable efforts than in access to a woman who could be the country's next president. If that sounds conspiratorial, consider the fact that of the hundreds of millions donated, just a small percentage of those funds are distributed to its charitable causes.
According to the Foundation's own tax filings,
just 10 percent of funding went to charities in 2013.
Political slush fund
As reported by
The New York Post, the foundation's finances are so shady that it has been placed on a "watch list" by a non-partisan organization, Charity Navigator, that monitors such groups after it was revealed that during 2013, the foundation took in $140 million but only spent $9 million on charitable activities.
"The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to
family friends," the
Post reported.
As for Stephanopoulos' claims that his donations were specifically for "global AIDS prevention and deforestation," those don't hold water. There are plenty of organizations out there that he could have donated to directly that specifically deal with those issues. How could he possibly have known that the
Clinton Foundation would have used his money directly for "global AIDS prevention and deforestation?"
"It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons," Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group where progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout was once an organizing director, told the
Post.
The function of the Clinton Family Foundation and the nature of its operations and sources of donations -- especially the foreign sources -- became an issue recently as Hillary Clinton prepared to launch her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton had failed to disclose information regarding the donations and their sources while she served as secretary of state in the Obama administration,
despite pledging to do so when she took the position.
Sources:http://www.politico.comhttp://www.mediaite.comhttp://thefederalist.comhttp://nypost.comhttp://www.reuters.com
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