The WSJ report says there’s no evidence to prove any quid pro quo here, but they detail in their report what happened between Hillary Clinton and UBS that looks a lot like a very unethical, if not criminal, quid pro quo:
WSJ – A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts.
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.
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 to 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.
Even CNBC covered it today, saying it looks terrible:
A Fox News Democratic Strategist weighed in, saying she doesn’t know why Hillary would do something like this knowing she wanted to run for president:
Oh that’s simple. She believes she’s above the law and wants to enrich herself as much as she possibly can. She’s a power hungry elitist who will stop at nothing to get what she wants: more power.
If the media wanted to, they could have a field day with Hillary Clinton, just like they did with George W. Bush while he was president. But just like Obama, they agree with her so they’ll mention something here or there but they’ll never go after her like they do Republicans.