The Associated Press’ Matt Lee called out the State Department Thursday after the agency announced it will not look into undisclosed donors to the Clinton Foundation which violated the Memorandum of Understanding.
State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters during Thursday’s briefing that the more than 1,100 undisclosed donors will not be reviewed as the department moves on.
“The State Department has not, and does not intend to initiate a formal review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters during Thursday’s State Department briefing.
Right away, Lee called out Rathke, telling him that the only reason they are not looking into this is because they don’t want to find any thing that “might raise a flag.”
“It seems like you’re not aware of anything — and there may not be anything there, but the reason that you’re not aware of anything is because, and not you personally, but the reason you are not aware of anything is because the building is refusing to go back and look at it to see if there is anything that might raise a flag,” Lee told the spokesman.
“Again, these private donations were — there was never any expectation that they would be reviewed…” Rathke said, before being cut off by Lee.
“But there was an expectation that they would be made public and so that you could go and look…then they weren’t made public and so, now that they are being made public, wouldn’t it make sense to go back and take a look at them and see whether there’s any questions raised and any red flag that might get raised?” Lee asked. “I don’t understand why you would just close your eyes to it because they’ve admitted that they didn’t live up to their end of the M.O.U. on this.”
“Yeah, but they have subsequently taken steps to address this,” he said before Lee cut him off again.
“But you’re not going and looking at what they’ve done to address that to see if it brought them into compliance. It’s almost as if they had an agreement that they didn’t follow through on but since she is no longer the Secretary of State you’re saying—well, that doesn’t apply anymore and so it just doesn’t matter,” Lee said. “You don’t know if it doesn’t matter or not because you’re not looking into it.”
“I think what we’ve seen is speculation,” Rathke said. “We haven’t said we’re not aware of any actions taken that were influenced by those donations.”
“What has been put out there are questions, but you’re saying that the State Department either doesn’t have the same questions or isn’t interested in finding out what the answer to those questions is,” Lee said. “That’s what it sounds like you’re saying because you’re saying you’re not going to go back and look to see whether the violations of the M.O.U. might raise questions, or raise red flags, about what was going on. Right?”
“I don’t have anything to say beyond what I’ve said. We are not aware of any indication that there was influence by these donations. We have reviewed entities as I described under the M.O.U.,” Rathke said. “These private donations would not have been reviewed by the State Department, and we are not going back to do a retroactive examination of each of those cases and we’re not going to make a retroactive judgment on those items.”
Lee continued to appear incredulous at Rathke’s assertion, asking him time and time again why the State Department is not interested in finding out if there was, at least, the slightest bit of impropriety.
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[h/t: Free Beacon]