Toll booth

The expressway to Hillary Clinton has a toll booth:

More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

The linked report from the Associated Press contains some excellent reporting, although it goes out of its way to make it sound as though nothing untoward is happening. An example:

In another case, Clinton was host at a September 2009 breakfast meeting at the New York Stock Exchange that listed Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman as one of the attendees. Schwarzman's firm is a major Clinton Foundation donor, but he personally donates heavily to GOP candidates and causes. One day after the breakfast, according to Clinton emails, the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman's request. In December that same year, Schwarzman's wife, Christine, sat at Clinton's table during the Kennedy Center Honors. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke.

Blackstone donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Eight Blackstone executives also gave between $375,000 and $800,000 to the foundation. And Blackstone's charitable arm has pledged millions of dollars in commitments to three Clinton Global aid projects ranging from the U.S. to the Mideast. Blackstone officials did not make Schwarzman available for comment.

Schwarzman is a major donor to Republicans, but he pays to play and Blackstone is a major player, much to the chagrin of many of Hillary's pals on the Left. And his top deputy at Blackstone, Hamilton James, is a big donor to Democrats. At the level these guys operate, you have to pay to play, and they do.

And then there's this guy:

[. . .] Claudio Osorio. He’s a Clinton Foundation donor who leveraged his “generosity” to get $10 million from the government with help from the Clinton State Department. Osorio is now serving a 12-year prison sentence after scamming the government out of millions and cheating his investsors.

Osorio was supposed to be building houses in Haiti. Didn't happen. Why did he get hep from State?

Why might Hillary Clinton be willing to steer resources to this crook’s project? For one thing, Osorio had hosted a fundraiser for Hillary at his Star Island mansion.

For another, Osorio was a Clinton Foundation donor, contributing between $10,000 and $50,000 to the organization, according to Goodman. In addition, he had hired Clinton’s 2008 finance director Jonathan Mantz to lobby OPIC for the loan request.

Less than 24 hours after Tabernacki, the OPIC official, wrote her memo citing Osorio’s Clinton connections, OPIC approved a $10 million loan. It approved the loan just two weeks after the company proposed the project. Officials told Goodman that the process usually takes months or years.

But not when you have friends in very high places.

With 15,000 more emails to catalog, we'll learn more. A lot more. Whether we'll learn it before November 8 is the question.