Clinton Military Tribunal: Day 2
Hillary Clinton’s military tribunal resumed on Monday morning at Guantanamo Bay, following a 72-hour pause that began Thursday afternoon when a disheveled Clinton collapsed to the floor in what seemed like an epileptic seizure. But on Saturday GITMO’s medical staff gave Clinton a clean bill of health, saying she had likely feigned illness to stall the trial.
At 10:00 a.m. Monday, Vice Adm. John G. Hannink’s opening comments derided Clinton’s behavior.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton knows she is guilty. Otherwise, she wouldn’t pretend to be sick to delay these proceedings. This woman is thoroughly evil, corrosive, bereft of morality,” Vice Adm. Hannink said, addressing the three-officer tribunal that will ultimately decide Clinton’s fate.
Veering from the context of Thursday’s interrogation, Vice Adm. Hannink leveled accusations against Clinton that we at RRN had not heard before. He produced documentation connecting Clinton and the Clinton Foundation to the disappearance of 23 Haitian and 3 American children who were presumably orphaned in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that killed an estimated 220,000 people on the island nation in 2010.
Since the incident involved American citizens, it was the tribunal’s duty to judge Clinton’s culpability in the matter, Vice Adm. Hannink said.
The three American children—ages 4,7 and 12—belonged to a humanitarian couple doing missionary work on the island nation. A day after the quake, Haitian authorities found the children and the corpse of an older Haitian woman, apparently the babysitter, in the rubble of their collapsed home. The parents had been volunteering at a village west of Port-au-Prince, near the quake’s epicenter.
Haitian authorities spent a week searching in vain for the missing parents, but concluded the couple must have perished in the quake.
Vice Adm. Hannink told the Tribunal that on Jan 24, 2010 Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, contacted Haitian President René Préval and said she wished to aid parentless children whose lives the earthquake had shattered.
Vice Adm. Hannink showed the tribunal a chain of email correspondence between Clinton and Préval. In one letter, Clinton stated explicitly that the overture to care for orphaned children was made on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, not the U.S. government, and that the Foundation would find foster homes for the children until such time they could be properly adopted.
“Préval belived she was sincere, and when he told her about the 3 American kids, she told him she’d take care of them too. But Clinton had ulterior motives, the evidence shows. She never ran this through the State Department, of which she was in charge. No, the Clinton Foundation chartered a boat to get those kids off the island, a boat that picked them up in Haiti and then vanished from the face of the planet. Neither State nor Health and Human Services has any record of the American children setting foot on American soil. Not the Haitian children, either. Where did they all go? Did they vanish into thin air? You made the offer, your name is on the emails, your Foundation arranged transportation. Do you have anything to say?”
Clinton, who hadn’t uttered a word since the proceedings began, said, “You’d have to ask the Clinton Foundation.”
“You are the Foundation,” Vice Adm. Hannink retorted. “The Clinton Foundation is a foundation in name only. You and it are the same entity.”
Clinton sat bone still and lapsed into silence.
Then Vice Adm. Hannink introduced a material witness, former Clinton Foundation accountant Bethany Greenbaum, who via ZOOM testified to Clinton’s criminality. The Clinton Foundation, she said, had paid IYC Yacht Solutions, which runs from Spain, $3,000,000 for a week-long yacht rental. Greenbaum called the 145’ Bliss a “party boat” with hot tubs, a sauna, and a loaded minibar.
“I know the ship was delivered to Miami with orders to sail for Haiti. Beyond that, I don’t know anything, and I was smart enough to not ask questions,” Greenbaum told the tribunal.
“But the defendant, Hillary Rodham Clinton, approved the expenditure?” Vice Adm. Hannink asked.
“Yes. Yes, she did,” Greenbaum replied.
After a brief recess, Vice Adm. Hannink said Italian authorities and IYC Yachting refused to cooperate in the military’s investigation of Hillary Clinton.
“We thought they’d help, but they didn’t. The defendant was a powerful and protected woman. Consider this: The average cost for renting a luxury yacht for a week in 2010 was, give or take, 300 grand. Yet Clinton paid ten times that much. Why? She certainly isn’t charitable, or a philanthropist. She paid for their silence, that’s what she bought for $3,000,000,” Vice Adm. Hannink postulated.
“Hillary Clinton in 2010 was arguably the most powerful woman on the planet. As Secretary of State, she wielded practically limitless power. As a government official, she could’ve rescued those children using official channels, but she was running a side business. The military argues that Clinton trafficked those children for personal profit, probably much more than the $3,000,000 she spent getting them out of Haiti. This is what you three officers must decide,” Vice Adm. Hannink continued.
Clinton Military Tribunal: Day 2