Charles Ortel: 40 days, 40 pieces of evidence that “the Clinton Foundation is not just a fraud, it’s a massive fraud”
(Apologies on the missing final seconds. I’m working with the phone-recording service company on getting them back.)
Charles Ortel is a whistleblower who, during the financial meltdown of 2008, researched and revealed fraud by General Electric to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. As described in one of his earliest articles on the subject, in March of 2015, he became suspicious of the Clinton Foundation and turned his full time attention to investigating it. Starting on September 6, 2016, and for 40 days, Charles will be releasing a series of one article per day on the Clinton Foundation, on his website.
While open about his disdain towards the Clintons (and to a lesser extent, the Bushes), he asserts the evidence in his research is comprehensive, objective, and well sourced. “This is not simply a fraud–which it is–it’s a massive fraud. And it’s a massive fraud that people in both parties, inside this country and in numerous countries around the world, have either willingly or unwillingly overlooked for almost 20 years… [In these 40 daily reports, we will be] revealing billions and billions of dollars of corrupt practices… This is Tammany Hall on steroids. This is not just confined to New York, it’s [global].” Beyond wanting to bring justice to the Clintons, Ortel is also motivated by the majority of those who donate to charities, who are not wealthy.
If none of the scandals associated to the Clintons over the years have brought them down, why does Ortel believe that this one can? Because in corporate fraud, it is required to prove intent, implying that the onus is on prosecutors to prove a crime was committed. This is not true with charity fraud, where it is the charity’s responsibility to prove that there is no fraud, implying that their paperwork must always be comprehensive, up-to-date, and publicly accessible. In other words, if someone at a charity commits fraud, they can go to jail even if they didn’t mean it. “And these rules are crystal-clear… It’s not like they’re buried in thousands of pages. They are crystal-clear.”
“Bill Clinton wrote a book in 2007 called ‘Giving‘ [for which he was paid $6.3 million]. I will be taking that book, which is in the public domain, and using it to indict him. In the first person, he declares crime after crime after crime… When you get involved in a charity and you don’t bother to know all the rules that apply to charities, [since intent is not required,] you can commit charity fraud.” He also points to the case of Hillary Clinton superdelegate and Democratic Florida congresswoman, Corrine Brown, who was indicted last month by the Obama administration’s Justice Department for $800,000 in charity fraud, and is facing the possibility of hundreds of years in prison.
People who commit fraud, “they have no moral compass, but they tend to be brilliant… They’re tough people to catch.” Regarding the Clintons, “we’re not talking about uneducated rubes. We’re talking about a Rhodes scholar, we’re talking about a Yale Law school graduate, and with Chelsea were talking about someone with a PhD and two other degrees. These are smart people. If they wanted to reveal the truth…they would’ve done it.”
“One of the oldest questions in the book is, who’s regulating the regulators? [Ratings agencies such as] Charity Watch and Charity Navigator are both very small enterprises. [They have minimal revenue, budget, and staff, and] are not equipped to evaluate the Clinton Foundation.” Although not accused of anything illegal, this is not unlike the influence and corruption of ratings agencies in the 2008 crash, from which GE, at the time it’s massive fraud was revealed, had a AAA rating. (I also can’t help but be reminded of this.)
As a former computer professional, I was interested in a potential and very specific technical issue. Some critical sources in Ortel’s research refers to information on websites that he does not control. I asked if it was a concern that perhaps some of these documents may be removed or altered, therefore invalidating or compromising his work. He pointed out that the Clinton Foundation’s website itself “is already gamed”. Documents have been removed in an alleged effort to suppress incriminating information (which is in itself an illegal act). That said, despite some required documents not being on the Clinton Foundation website, they are indeed available on the websites of other organizations, states, and countries. “I have what I need.”
A post script from Mr. Ortel: “For you and for your audience, I’m going to be so bold as to give you all an assignment.” He suggests reading Thomas Jefferson’s only book from 1787, where he predicted the current “political convulsion”, which is an inevitable reaction to rapidly growing corruption, derived from money and “growing lazy”. (In my interpretation the laziness is the vegetative state people have taken in front of the so-called news and their personal electronic devices.) Ortel paraphrases: “There will come a time when there will be a convulsion. [Where] the chains that are tearing us down will be thrown off and we will enter a new era…or we will basically disappear.”
(Shout out to Kitty Snyder, a fellow Bernie Sanders super-volunteer and DNC delegate who I worked with throughout the 2016 Democratic primaries. Kitty is also a copy editor for theThompson Timeline, through which she met Charles. To me, Kitty is the visual symbol representing the struggle of the Bernie delegates at the Democratic National convention.)
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