Haiti: Election President says Clinton State Dept changed results in 2010

[KamaAina]

http://sentinel.ht/news/articles/political/6349-haiti-election-president-says-clinton-state-dept-changed-results-in-2010

The President of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) revealed on Thursday that the 2010 first round election results, that followed a six week recount that brought Michel Martelly into the second round of the elections and eventually to power, were not in keeping with the voice of the Haitian people. Opont says the results were changed by Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff of the Hillary Clinton State Department, and OAS observers.

Pierre Louis Opont's revelation came during an interview with Valery Numa on Vision 2000. In trying to explain his virtual silence on the issue, he said after meetings between Mills and OAS commission members the decision to keep silent was to avoid violence in the country. Opont served as director general of the 2010 CEP and has made declarations, throughout the years, in the same sense but spoke with more clarity in last week's interview.

Riots, mostly concentrated in the southern city of Les Cayes ensued after the results. Property and businesses were burned including the headquarters of the ruling party, Inite. It was noted that the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was at its peak during this same year of the January 12, 2010 earthquake but were noticeably absent from maintaining order on this day....

Clinton, for having left the revolution and crisis that had taken hold in Egypt, to travel to Haiti, be seen with candidates at the height of its general elections, these have been used to explain the manner in which Martelly has governed - running absent many of Haiti's key institutions and affording a gold mine for the Clinton family under irregular circumstances. The visit was also a violation of what the Obama White House and National Security Council calls a "long-standing practice and principle": to not be seen with candidates or heads of state of foreign countries during their elections.

[Divernan]

1. HRC: What "gold mine for the Clinton family under irregular circumstances"?

Wow! The hits against HRC just keep on coming. Almost have to feel sorry for her supporters who keep getting blindsided.

Ricardo Seitenfus, a respected Brazilian professor of international relations, who had been working as a special representative of the OAS in Haiti since 2008, made statements to Swiss newspaper Le Temps after observing the electoral process. He criticized the international community, MINUSTAH and NGOs for meddling with the results. He was abruptly ousted on Christmas Day 2011 and has published a book on the fraud he alleges to have witnessed.

The recount process took about 6 weeks and into January. The differences did tighten between the candidates but did not make Michel Martelly eligible for the second round. The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Haiti on January 21, 2011. The visit was then and has been a major point of criticism, among many other missteps of the Clinton State Department, over the years.

Clinton, for having left the revolution and crisis that had taken hold in Egypt, to travel to Haiti, be seen with candidates at the height of its general elections, these have been used to explain the manner in which Martelly has governed - running absent many of Haiti's key institutions and affording a gold mine for the Clinton family under irregular circumstances. The visit was also a violation of what the Obama White House and National Security Council calls a "long-standing practice and principle": to not be seen with candidates or heads of state of foreign countries during their elections.

CEP President Opont says that as director general he gave the official recount results to the international observers. He says that Cherly Mills, the Chief of State for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the observers from the Organization of American States then gave results different then what were passed to them.

[BrotherIvan]

2. I looked it up to see if this was a "rw smear job"

This is sort of shocking. And stupid. This is also mixed up with the Clinton Foundation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2983112/Hillary-Clinton-s-brother-landed-lucrative-gold-mining-permit-Haiti-Bill-Clinton-helped-country-recover-earthquake-devastation.html

Hillary Clinton's brother landed lucrative gold-mining permit in Haiti after Bill Clinton helped country recover from earthquake devastation

An unusual nexus of mining interests, relief work in Haiti, and a former U.S. first family is raising new ethics questions that could affect Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions.
Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, was a board member of a North Carolina mining company that enjoyed prime access to Haitian gold deposits in the wake of post-earthquake relief work organized in part by former president Bill Clinton through the Clinton Foundation.
Another board member of the firm, VCS Mining, was former Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, who co-chaired the charitable Interim Haiti Recovery Commission with Mr. Clinton.

There are quite a lot of stories about this but too many to link so it's not some obscure hit piece.

[KamaAina]

3. Well, the Daily Fail would not be averse to printing a RW smear job

[BrotherIvan]

4. It's even on his Wikipedia page

I didn't follow the situation with the foundation in Haiti but did see some things. Never heard of a gold mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rodham

Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake and with Bill Clinton co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, Rodham and some partners proposed a $22 million deal to rebuild homes in the devastated nation, with funding to come from the Clinton Foundation.[5] The deal never went forward and the Clinton Foundation said it was unaware of the proposal.[5] In October 2013, Rodham joined the advisory board of VCS Mining, a Delaware-based company that was planning a gold mine in the Cap-Haïtien Arrondissement area of Haiti.[28] By 2015 the project had become controversial due to possible environmental effects and the level of foreign ownership; for his part Rodham objected to any inference that he had gotten this position due to his family: "I'm a very accomplished person in my own right. I raise money for a lot of people. That's what I basically do."[28]

[questionseverything]

5. bookmarking

rigging elections and stealing wealth...i wish i was surprised

[BrotherIvan]

6. You knew something was going down when this guy got in on it

[questionseverything]

7. bi partisan theft

wonder how the bushs are involved in the gold mine

god forbid the people of Haiti are enriched with the wealth from their own natural resources

did ya know mud cookies are a staple of the haitian diet....and they actually have to pay for the freaking mud?

the people of haiti are the only nation where the slaves themselves liberated themselves

[Divernan]

8. OMG! It was literally a gold mine, not just a figure of speech for a scam.

[BrotherIvan]

10. This is how a Republican wins

And so now the worm has turned and we see that all the arguments about SCOTUS and Republicans controlling every branch of government are coming to pass. If this kind of scandal blows up in the general, it will be a Ronald Reagan landslide.

And you can bet the Republicans have every single bit of it. NO WONDER JEB RAN THIS TIME! I swear to god, that has puzzled me because I really thought he would wait until her second term. Jeb will not run to lose.

This is pretty serious and should not be brushed aside. This is not coming from me as a Bernie supporter but as a Democrat. This is not good.

[Divernan]

17. The way Rodham talks he's a regular at Clinton Family Initiative meetings

and that's where he makes his connections for his deals. See the specifics in my links below to reports by the New York Times and The Washington Post.

The heavyset 60-year-old man who walked with a cane seemed an unlikely speaker at the glamorous launch party for a cosmetics company held in Santa Monica, Calif., in March.

But Tony Rodham appeared at ease among the special guests and well-heeled investors, offering them encouragement as well as an invitation. “If there’s anything I can ever do for any of you, let me know,” Mr. Rodham said. “I’ll be more than happy to do it.”

A promotional video of the party that the cosmetics company later released identified the speaker as “the youngest brother of former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton,” a relationship that has been Mr. Rodham’s calling card since the days of the Clinton White House.


On and off for two decades, the affable Mr. Rodham has tried to use his connections with his sister and his brother-in-law, former President Bill Clinton, to further a business career that has seen more failures than successes. The connections to the Clintons have given Mr. Rodham, a self-described “facilitator,” a unique appeal and a range of opportunities, like addressing Chinese investor conferences and joining an advisory board of a company seeking permission to mine for gold in Haiti.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/us/politics/tony-rodhams-ties-invite-scrutiny-forhillary-and-bill-clinton.html?_r=0

You remember Tony - he married and was eventually was divorced by Barbara Boxer's daughter and then became a deadbeat dad to the tune of $158,000 unpaid child support. As some senior anonymous person from the Clinton Administration I once said, "You never wanted to hear their name come up in any context other than playing golf.'' They'll be heavily reported on should HRC be the candidate in 2016.

[BrotherIvan]

11. How's that for optics? A gold mine...

[nc4bo]

9. How very interesting.

There must be some other explanation besides cronyism. .......right?

[dsc]

12. wow now we are going into whack job conspiracy theories

A couple of things. One, the OAS and the Obama Administration officially disputed the results and the commission had already decided on the two who made the run off before she came. Two, she met with not only the two finalists but also the candidate of the ruling party who had come in third. I guess next you be regaling us with dispatches about aliens at area 51.

[KamaAina]

13. You got a better explanation for all these computer crashes?

[jwirr]

19. It will not make any difference if it is true or not. This is a real situation that the Rs can and

will twist to use against her. And there is enough truth in it that they will be able to turn it into a real problem for Hillary. All of the stories they have brought up against her have some truth - just enough truth that many general election voters will not even bother to ask questions.

Remember that the Rs twisted a actual lie about John Kerry. And too many people believed it.

IMO Bernie has a better chance of winning than Hillary does. He is going to have to answer for his so called "socialist" positions but people who listen to those positions will see that his ideas are actually Democratic.

[dsc]

20. by that standard

Bernie's wife's presidency of a college is a problem. The right wing is already claiming she used him to get favors to enrich herself. The difference between us is that apparently you thing the right wing should pick our nominee while I don't.

[jwirr]

23. Not telling you who to vote for - saying who I am going to vote for and why.

[Thinkingabout]

14. I got it, now we are getting ready for the blame to move from Obama to Hillary. Good move, she

expects this.

[Divernan]

15. Tony Rodham’s Ties Invite Scrutiny for Hillary and Bill Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/us/politics/tony-rodhams-ties-invite-scrutiny-forhillary-and-bill-clinton.html?_r=0

When Mr. Clinton worked as a co-chairman of Haiti’s earthquake recovery commission, Mr. Rodham and his partners sought a $22 million deal to rebuild homes in the country. In court proceedings three years ago in an unrelated lawsuit, Mr. Rodham explained how “a guy in Haiti” had “donated” 10,000 acres of land to him and described how he had leaned on Mr. Clinton to get the rebuilding project funded amid bureaucratic delays.

“I deal through the Clinton Foundation. That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials,” Mr. Rodham said, according to a transcript of his testimony. “I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it.

“And he keeps telling me, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Well, tomorrow hasn’t come yet.”

Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project never did happen. The Clinton Foundation said in a statement that it was not aware of Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project and had no involvement in it. Mr. Clinton’s office said he had not been involved in any of Mr. Rodham’s pursuits in Haiti.

[dsc]

21. so Rodham asks and Clinton tell him to buzz off

and the scandal is where?

[Divernan]

16. Role of Hillary Clinton’s brother in Haiti gold mine raises eyebrows

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/role-of-hillary-clintons-brother-in-haiti-gold-mine-raises-eyebrows/2015/03/20/c8b6e3bc-cc05-11e4-a2a7-9517a3a70506_story.html

It also has become a potentially problematic issue for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she considers a second presidential run, after it was revealed this month that in 2013, one of her brothers was added to the advisory board of the company that owns the mine.

Tony Rodham’s involvement with the mine, which has become a source of controversy in Haiti because of concern about potential environmental damage and the belief that the project will primarily benefit foreign investors, was first revealed in publicity about an upcoming book on the Clintons by author Peter Schweizer.

In interviews with The Washington Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative — an offshoot of the Clinton Foundation that critics have long alleged invites a blurring of its charitable mission with the business interests of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their corporate donors.
Asked whether he attends CGI meetings to explore personal business opportunities, Rodham responded, “No, I go to see old friends. But you never know what can happen.”

Before anyone starts waxing indignant about the writer/researcher who initially broke this story, please try to face the reality that both the New York Times and the Washington Post vetted the facts of the story and did their own interivews of Hillary's baby brother and the chief executive of the mining company.

And that "blurring" referred to above is known by inside-the-Beltway-types as The Clinton Blur.

[dsc]

22. that would be the vetting that lead them to have to issue several corrections

or maybe it is the vetting they put into the stories about Gore's campaign, or maybe the vetting the put into Whitewater (where a whole book of debunking plus a movie of debunking were created).

[Divernan]

18. Hillary Clinton's brothers could cause major problems for her presidential campaign

"Will they be a problem? Yes. They underscore everything that people fear and hate about the Clintons," the aide said. "They're essentially the id of Bill and Hillary Clinton. A bunch of money-grubbing and opportunistic hillbillies with no sense of ethics, decency, or even legality."

Indeed, while Hugh Rodham has yet to make headlines this cycle, last weekend, the New York Times published a story delving into Clinton's youngest brother, Tony Rodham. The paper reported he had repeatedly tried to profit from his connection to the former first family.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's two brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, could be a problem for her presidential campaign. Over the years, the pair has been at the center of multiple controversies for their business dealings and Republicans are already using them to attack Clinton.

One aide for a rival 2016 campaign told Business Insider that Clinton's brothers will definitely cause issues for her White House bid.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clintons-brothers-tony-and-hugh-rodham-2015-5#ixzz3fL4F7D98