Clinton's Dealings With Donor Scrutinized

Back in 2005, a man The New York Times describes as a "Canadian mining financier" by the name of Frank Giustra and former President Bill Clinton went on a three-country philanthropic tour. First stop--Kazakhstan. Though Giustra's firm had never mined in Kazakhstan, which has a great deal of uranium, Giustra was very interested in an exclusive deal to mine that uranium.

One problem, doing business with Kazakhstan is a bit tricky because their president, Nursultan Nazarbayev (the guy shaking Clinton's hand in the picture), is an international pariah. In his country, torture among prisoners is widespread. The Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law reports all kinds of abuses, many of which the government has freely admitted. During Clinton's presidency his own State Department blasted Kazakhstan, so much so that Nazarbayev himself responded to the criticism.

Now we know that just three years ago, Bill Clinton and one of his foundations' largest--if not the largest--donors were doing business with this guy.

After the jump: Does this affect the presidential race? Should it?

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PD toolbar!The deal made the dictator of Kazakhstan look good.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader's bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton's public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan's poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan's state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world's largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

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Of course, it should be pointed out that our current president had Nazarbayev over to Camp David in 2006. I think more was discussed than just how pissed Nazarbayev was over the Borat movie.

What's troubling in Clinton's dealings is the appearance of a quid pro quo.

From the same article:

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton's charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra's more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton's inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

So Giustra donated a lot of money to Clinton's foundation. That's great, because that foundation does amazing work. But is this how Bill Clinton has to fund that work? Does he have to do it by slanging uranium and propping up mini-Stalins like Nazerbayev?

How this affects the campaign remains murky. It could become a major campaign scandal because donors can give to the foundation, then later expect favoritism from the administration. The International Herald Tribune covered the issue in December.

On that topic, TPM's Josh Marshall wrote, "As far as I know, Bill Clinton says he'd still keep raising money for the foundation even while Hillary was president. And there's no question the foundation does a lot of good works with the money, whatever the nature of the fundraising or the money's origins. But Bill's nuts if he thinks he'll be able to keep raising money like this if Hillary's president. It's not even a close call."

Most importantly, Democratic voters on super Tuesday may not want four years of stories like this.


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