The State Department (which Hillary Clinton used to run and where she still holds significant influence) has been very clear about one thing. There is no relationship between donations to the Clinton Foundation and actions taken by the Secretary of State during her tenure there. Period. Full stop. End of discussion. Perish the thought. You’re all just a bunch of Clinton haters who are trying to stop the ongoing charity work of these wonderful people.

And yet for some strange reason we keep seeing stories like this. Hillary hadn’t even finished unpacking her things in her new office at the State Department after Barack Obama appointed her when a situation was dumped in her lap. The Swiss government was concerned that the IRS was suing UBS AG – one of the biggest banks in Switzerland – to get them to reveal the identities of tens of thousands of clients. (Wall Street Journal)

If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.

Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown.

Well, the Swiss may have gotten off pretty easy, but at least a compromise had been reached, right? Job well done, Mrs. Clinton. Peace is maintained between the US and an influential ally. And now we can all go about our business. Except for one disturbing aspect of the story which cropped up in the following months.

From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased. Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according the foundation and the bank.

The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.

The WSJ is quick to point out that there is no evidence of any link between these events, but at what point does coincidence become too much to ignore? You’re talking about one of the richest, most powerful financial entities on the planet who, up until Clinton took over at state, had given a grand total of $60K to the foundation. (An amount which likely fell well short of how much USB spent on coffee and donuts during the same period.) And then, in a matter of weeks, the cash spigots opened up and increased tenfold over the next six years. Tens of millions in loans to efforts supported by the foundation were in addition to a direct set of cash deposits into Bill Clinton’s pocket totally $1.5M… not the foundation’s coffers. And if I remember correctly, Bill and Hill were still filing their taxes jointly at the time, weren’t they?

The Swiss bank got a truly sweet deal and millions of dollars flowed immediately thereafter into the accounts of both the Clintons and their foundation. So we are asked to accept that there no causal relationship between these two sets of data points. We can’t prove that there is absent some secret recording turning up, but at what point can the media say that this beggars belief and the empress has no clothes?

SEPARATE BUT SIMILAR?

Here’s a bonus story along the same lines from the Daily Caller. Another big donor to the Clinton Foundation, as well as having close ties to Democrat leadership, is trying to get a woman thrown in jail because she’s been talking to the press about sexual abuse at his hands.

Hansjorg Wyss — a foreign billionaire with intimate ties to the United States’ top Democrats — wants authorities to imprison an American woman for speaking publicly about allegations of sexual abuse at his hands.

The revelations — first reported by The Daily Caller News Foundation — threaten to alienate female voters, a key constituency of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Wyss is a major donor to The Clinton Foundation, a director at The Center for American Progress, and once paid now-Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta $87,000.

Jacqueline Long of Aspen, Colorado alleges that Wyss would demand sex, and then later shower her with expensive gifts and contributions to causes she, as a development officer, advised the foundation to support.

It will be fascinating to see if anybody – particularly those with ties to the Clintons – steps in on this guy’s behalf. Read the whole disgusting story at the link.