As Blatter goes, will FIFA scandal tentacles touch the 'Hillary for President' campaign?
Hours before Sepp Blatter announced his resignation at the embattled FIFA organization, a challenging column in the Wall Street Journal posed questions about the links between FIFA and the Clinton Foundation.
Hillary with FIFA official Chuck Blazer, said to be assisting probe
Much else has to come in the relentless American probe . Could it have an impact on Hillary’s drive for the presidency?
In his WSJ column Pulitzer prizewinner Bret Stephens wrote”Let us count the ways in which the Clinton Foundation resembles the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, better known as FIFA.”
He pointed out that last week we learned that FIFA had made a donation to the Foundation in the range of $50,000 to $100,000.
Stephens commented that “for the Clintons that kind of money is hardly worth mentioning, so the suggestion of some sort of unseemly financial linkage between the two organizations is doubtful. You don’t get to roll with Bill, Hill or Chelsea for less than seven figures.”
However we also learned, said Stephens, that the “Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee,” organizer of the forthcoming World Cup in the Arab kingdom, gave the foundation as much as $500,000, while the Qatari state itself gave up to $5 million.
Stephens found this more interesting. “Qatar’s successful bid for the Cup is one of the scandals of the age, tarred by serious allegations of bribery as well as the country’s dismal record of abusing foreign workers,” said Stephens .
The Clinton Foundation’s website says it will use the Qatari money to develop “sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar.”
Stephens wrote, “ Think of the Qatari money as a way of trying to scrub itself clean with that special Clinton shampoo.
“The Qatar story is suggestive of the way in which both FIFA and the Clinton Foundation work. Both organizations serve as portals through which shadowy people find their way, for a given price, into the light: the light of social respectability, the best parties, the right connections.”
Initially Blatter shrugged off the scandal to win his fifth term as FIFA’s president.
“Naturally, too, Mrs. Clinton will shrug off her scandals to win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination,” said Stephens.
“When the media describe the Clintons as resilient or unsinkable or bulletproof—the ultimate “Comeback Kids”—what they really mean is that they are shameless. Nothing embarrasses them, so nobody stops them.”