1) The Esquire article was written by noted Clinton supporter Joe Conason, whom I respect a great deal. That said, Conason carefully elides a few points. Notice:
And that means perpetual motion. By early afternoon on September 5, the Clintons were in the air again, on their way home from Houston. After dropping the senator off in Chappaqua, the motorcade brought Clinton back to the airport. Idling there was another private jet, owned by Frank Giustra, the former chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment. It waited to transport Clinton and his entourage, including Giustra, to Central Asia and then on to China.
On the way, however, they stopped in Scotland for a few hours to refuel and to take a breakfast meeting at 4:00 A.M. with Tom Hunter, a Glasgow investor and philanthropist who has decided that he wants to get involved in African development. Hunter had accompanied the former president on part of the July trip to southern Africa, and, impressed with the performance of Clinton's HIV/AIDS Initiative in those countries, he had tentatively agreed to donate $100 million to health and education projects over the coming decade. Clinton had touched down to confirm that commitment, which Hunter agreed to announce in person at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.
Late in the evening on September 6, the Clinton party landed in Almaty, the mountainous former capital of Kazakhstan, and from the airport proceeded directly to a meeting with President Nursultan Nazarbayev, much as if this were an official diplomatic visit.
At a joint nighttime press conference, Clinton praised Nazarbayev for dismantling the nuclear arsenal he inherited from the Soviets, who used to test weapons in the remote republic. Then, before sitting down to a midnight banquet, Clinton signed an agreement with the Kazakh health minister that permits the government to buy heavily discounted HIV/AIDS drugs through the Clinton foundation's procurement consortium. Sometime around 2:30 A.M., he met with the Kazakh opposition leaders to hear their complaints about the authoritarian Nazarbayev. Within an hour he was in the air again, heading to Lucknow, India.
What does Conason NOT say? he doesn't mention that Clinton also praised Nazarbayev's progress toward democracy. He doesn't mention the reason for Giustra's visit to Kazakhstan. In fact, he doesn't even mention that Giustra is in the mining business, labeling him only the "former chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment." These all seem like material points, unless you're writing a Clinton puff piece, in which case details of Giustra's business dealings would seem irrelevant or suspect, and details of Clinton's praise for Nazarbayev a little iffy, at best. Joe Conason's a smart guy. I doubt this information is absent because he didn't KNOW about it. But hey, maybe I'm wrong.
2 and 3) Nobody doubts that Giustra contributed faithfully to the Clinton charities. That's beside the point. Moreover, the suggestion is not that Clinton lobbied for Kazatomprom, but that he provided a human rights fig-leaf in the form of positive statements about Nazarbayev, so your second and third excerpts are immaterial.
4) He did meet with dissidents. Good. So what? You label this section "Regarding President Clinton's reported remarks about President Nazarbayev and Kazakhstan's effort to head the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe." But the excerpt doesn't regard those statements at all.
5 and 6) Immaterial. It is, of course, a common tactic to defend against a charge that does not exist in order to obfuscate the charge that does exist. That seems to be the point of excerpts 5 and 6.
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