Hillary Rodham Clinton at a round-table discussion on Tuesday in Monticello, Iowa.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
By AMY CHOZICK
The
book does not hit shelves until May 5, but already the Republican Rand
Paul has called its findings “big news” that will “shock people” and
make voters “question” the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Clinton
Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and
Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a
186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by
foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a
presidential cycle still in its infancy.
The
book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that
foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr.
Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s
State Department in return.
“We
will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons
that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions
benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.
His examples include a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a
major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South
American nation, development projects in the aftermath of the Haitian
earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Mr. Clinton
by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.
In
the long lead up to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announcement, aides proved
adept in swatting down critical books as conservative propaganda,
including Edward Klein’s “Blood Feud,” about tensions between the
Clintons and the Obamas, and Daniel Halper’s “Clinton Inc.: The
Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.”
But
“Clinton Cash” is potentially more unsettling, both because of its
focused reporting and because major news organizations including The
Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with
the author to pursue the story lines found in the book.
Members
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which includes Mr. Paul and
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have been briefed on the book’s
findings, and its contents have already made their way into several of
the Republican presidential candidates’ campaigns.
Conservative “super PACs” plan to seize on “Clinton Cash,” and a pro-Democrat super PAC
has already assembled a dossier on Mr. Schweizer, a speechwriting
consultant to former President George W. Bush and a fellow at the
conservative Hoover Institution who has contributed to the conservative
website Breitbart.com, to make the case that he has a bias against Mrs.
Clinton.
And
the newly assembled Clinton campaign team is planning a full-court
press to diminish the book as yet another conservative hit job.
A
campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon, called the book part of the
Republicans’ coordinated attack strategy on Mrs. Clinton “twisting
previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories,” and he said “it
will not be the first work of partisan-fueled fiction about the
Clintons’ record, and we know it will not be the last.”
Mr.
Schweizer and a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, which is owned by News
Corporation and is publishing the book, declined to comment.
The timing is problematic for Mrs. Clinton as she begins a campaign to position herself as a “champion for everyday Americans.”
From
2001 to 2012, the Clintons’ income was at least $136.5 million, Mr.
Schweizer writes, using a figure previously reported in The Post.
“During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted
or facilitated hundreds of large transactions” with foreign governments
and individuals, he writes. “Some of these transactions have put
millions in their own pockets.”
The
Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny for accepting foreign
donations while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state. Last week,
the foundation revised its policy to allow donations from countries like
Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Britain but prohibit giving by
other nations in the Middle East.
Mr. Schweizer’s book will be released the same day former President Bill Clinton
and the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, will host the Clinton Global
Initiative gathering with donors in Morocco, the culmination of a
foundation trip to several African nations. (A chapter in the book is
titled “Warlord Economics: The Clintons Do Africa.”)
There
is a robust market for books critical of the Clintons. The thinly
sourced “Blood Feud,” by Mr. Klein, at one point overtook Mrs. Clinton’s
memoir “Hard Choices” on the best-seller list.
But
whether Mr. Schweizer’s book can deliver the same sales is not clear.
He writes mainly in the voice of a neutral journalist and meticulously
documents his sources, including tax records and government documents,
while leaving little doubt about his view of the Clintons.
His
reporting largely focuses on payments made to Mr. Clinton for speeches,
which increased while his wife served as secretary of state, writing
that “of the 13 Clinton speeches that fetched $500,000 or more, only two
occurred during the years his wife was not secretary of state.”
In
2011, Mr. Clinton made $13.3 million in speaking fees for 54 speeches,
the majority of which were made overseas, the author writes.
Correction: April 19, 2015
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect name for the
think tank for which Peter Schweizer is a fellow. It is the Hoover
Institution, not the Hoover Institute.
