Politics

LEAKS: Foreign Clinton Foundation Donor Wanted To ‘Connect’ With Hillary’s Campaign

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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A top official with the Norwegian embassy asked Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta for a meeting with the campaign, according to leaked emails.

“One of our new neighbors is Birgitte Hygen, She is the political counselor for the Embassy of Norway,” lawyer Jim Davidson, a shareholder at the law firm Polsinelli, told Podesta in a November 2015 email released by WikiLeaks.

“She asked if there is someone in Secretary Clinton’s campaign with whom she could make contact,” Davidson asked.

It’s unclear if Podesta responded to Davidson’s request or if the campaign got in touch with Hygen.

Norway’s government is one of the biggest donors to the Clinton Foundation, but the country’s effort to mask its nearly $90 million in donations to Clinton’s nonprofit while she headed the Department of State sparked political backlash at home.

The daily newspaper Dagbladet found the Norwegian government gave $89.6 million to the foundation, but the Clinton Foundation’s website only listed Norway as giving between $10 million and $25 million.

It turns out Norway was masking the full extent of its donations by breaking them “into sub-groups in order to make the combined contributions appear smaller than they actually are.”

Dagbladet also found that “Foreign Minister Børge Brende violated the government’s own policies by handing $3.57 million from the foreign aid budget to the Clinton Foundation,” according to Jacob Bojesson, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s chief Scandinavian correspondent.

Norway also donated to the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), an independent arm of the foundation, according to Dagbladet.

In September 2012, Norway teamed up with CHAI for “an ambitious health care project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is part of the State Department,” according to the Washington Examiner.

International Business Times reported that State Department-approved weapons exports to Norway grew 23 percent while Clinton headed the department. Norway had donated heavily to the foundation during this time.

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