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Hillary’s Blood Money: How Terrorists Funded Hillary’s Senate and Presidential Campaigns

Original research | 06/13/2016 | Fedora
Posted on 6/13/2016, 4:24:49 PM by Fedora

In May, 2000, Senatorial candidate Hillary Clinton received a $1,000 donation from American Muslim Council (AMC) founder Abdurahman Alamoudi,(1) a Falls Church, Virginia Muslim Brotherhood member and Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda supporter who was also the first president of the Islamic Society of Boston mosque, later attended by Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.(2) Alamoudi, an Eritrean immigrant who came to the United States in 1979 and became a naturalized citizen in 1996, was convicted to 23 years in prison in 2004 for illegal financial dealings with that included raising funds from the Libyan government for a 2003 Al Qaeda assassination plot against then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.(3) In 2011, the Obama administration persuaded U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton to reduce six years from Alamoudi’s sentence, for reasons that remain under seal.(4)

How Abdurahman Alamoudi Became a Clinton Fundraiser

Alamoudi had previously worked with the Clinton administration during Clinton’s first term as an Islamic affairs advisor and as a goodwill ambassador to Muslim nations.(5) His American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council was approved by the Defense Department to approve Muslim and military chaplains. He also worked with the Clinton Education Department to develop “Federal Guidelines for Religious Expression in Public Schools” which restricted Christian expression at public schools.

In January 1996, Alamoudi’s AMC assistant director, Khaled Saffuri, organized a Senate observance of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and personally invited Hillary as First Lady.(6) President Bill Clinton took the opportunity to send best wishes to Muslims everywhere on behalf of himself and the First Lady.(7) At approximately this time, Hillary’s staff was assigned Huma Abedin, executive board member of George Washington University’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), an organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.(8) Alamoudi had been president of the national MSA in the 1980s.

Following Hillary’s attendance at the Senate Ramadan observance, her aides asked her to organize a similar White House observance. Consequently, in February 1996, as First Lady, Hillary Clinton hosted and spoke at the first White House celebration of Ramadan.(9) Over the next four years, the White House Ramadan observance became an annual event, leading Alamoudi to boast, “We are the ones who went to the White House and defended what is called Hamas.”

During Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign, the connections forged through Alamoudi’s network proved valuable. In May, the same month Alamoudi made his $1,000 donation, Hillary raised $50,000 during a fundraiser at the Washington, DC home of Hani Masri, a supporter of Yasser Arafat.(10) In June, Alamoudi and Clinton both attended a $500-a-ticket Boston fundraiser for her Senate campaign organized by Tahir Ali, Massachusetts chairman of the American Muslim Alliance (later spun off into the American Muslim Task Force).(11) Founded in 1994 and chaired nationally by California State University professor Agha Saeed, an associate of Alamoudi, in 1998 the AMA had joined the AMC and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) at a Brooklyn College rally publicly calling for Palestinian use of “armed force” against Israel and referring to Jews as “pigs and monkeys”.(12) During Ali’s June 2000 fundraiser, Clinton accepted a plaque signed by the American Muslim Alliance commemorating her human rights work. She came away from the event with $50,000 in donations.

On August 8, Hillary sent the AMA a thank-you note on White House stationery for their plaque.(13) In Federal Election Commission filings on Alamoudi’s donation, Hillary’s campaign listed Alamoudi as a member of the “American Museum Council” rather than the American Muslim Council.(14)

Clinton’s Alamoudi Link Exposed

On October 24, 2000, the New York Daily News spoke to Hillary’s campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson about her June fundraising event. Following inquiries from the News, Wolfson said Alamoudi’s $1,000 donation would be returned immediately. Wolfson denied that Hillary was aware of the AMA’s involvement in the fundraiser, insisting that it was not listed on invitations to the fundraiser. Wolfson added that “Hillary is a strong supporter of peace and security for Israel” and cited her criticism of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Ali responded to Hillary’s criticism of Arafat, “The idea is to win the election. . .that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just at the spur of the moment that she must say these things, and we understand that.” Ali further explained that the AMA had taken over sponsorship of the fundraiser about a week before the event, which is why its name was left off invitations to the event. However, the News pointed out that the plaque Hillary accepted at the fundraiser said in large print, “Presented to the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton” from “American Muslim Alliance; Massachusetts June 13, 2000”.

On October 25, Hillary held a Queens news conference announcing that she would be returning the $50,000 as well as Alamoudi’s $1,000, saying of the AMA, “The statements that are attributed to the organization and some of its members are offensive and outrageous. . .’I don’t want anyone to be under a misimpression. I don’t want anyone to have a false idea about what I believed was the case, so I am going to return all of the money.”(15) The George W. Bush campaign, which Khaled Saffuri had joined through the influence of Grover Nyquist, also stated it would be returning $1,000 to Alamoudi. Alamoudi was out of the country and unavailable for comment, but then-AMC president Yahya Mossa-Basha told the New York Times that his organization was opposed to terrorism.

On October 28, on behalf of Hillary’s Senate opponent Rick Lazio, New York Governor George Pataki, said, “ Mrs. Clinton should say why she filed this under the American Museum Council, not the American Muslim Council.” In response, Hillary’s campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson claimed it was a typo.(16) Meanwhile, an unapologetic Alamoudi spoke to a rally at the White House, telling the audience, “I wish they added I am a supporter of Hezbollah. Anybody supports Hezbollah here?”

On November 3, Hillary’s thank-you letter to the AMA surfaced. After being questioned by reporters, Hillary’s campaign released the letter. Hillary’s campaign claimed that it had previously “checked the White House archives but failed at that time to find any letter” after the fundraiser story initially broke.

The Clinton Connection to Mohammed Alamoudi and Joseph Wilson

Alamoudi links to the Clintons continued despite this exposure. The Alamoudis are a wealthy Saudi-Ethiopian clan with extensive business interests in Africa and the Middle East. In 1997, another member of the Alamoudi clan, Mohammed Alamoudi, had met Clinton State Department African diplomat Joseph Wilson.(17) Alamoudi and Wilson met at a reception organized for the World Bank by Westar Group, a Westar Energy affiliate which managed Alamoudi’s business interests in Washington. Like Wilson, Westar Group was involved with the Corporate Council on Africa, which promoted Bill Clinton’s policies in Africa.

In 1998, Wilson divorced his second wife Jacqueline, having started an affair with CIA agent Valerie Plame, and retired from the State Department to open J.C. Wilson International Ventures, a consulting firm that advised on foreign investments in Africa and the Middle East. Wilson’s company operated out of the offices of Rock Creek, a company run by Alamoudi and Elias Aburdene, an Arab-American international banking advisor and lobbyist who had previously advised banks linked to organized crime and intelligence community figures involved in the Savings and Loan scandal. Wilson began advising Turkish-American investment groups such as Brent Scowcroft’s American-Turkish Council (ATC) and Tumu Gumustekin’s Corporate & Public Strategy Advisory Group (CPS). Meanwhile, Bill Clinton traveled to Africa to promote American business, on a March 1998 trip Wilson helped organize.

In 1999, Mohammed Alamoudi’s business partner Khalid bin Mahfouz was placed under house arrest by Saudi Arabia after the Saudis discovered his National Commercial Bank was financing Al Qaeda fronts.(18) The press reported that U.S. authorities were also investigating Alamoudi’s Capitol Trust Bank. Both bin Mahfouz and Alamoudi were defended by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, which bin Mahfouz had previously hired to defend him during the BCCI scandal, and which was also defending the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist financing front linked to Abdurahman Alamoudi.

Meanwhile, also in 1999, Plame recommended that Wilson travel to Niger on a mission for the CIA. Wilson soon became a campaign advisor for Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. Following George W. Bush’s election and the September 11 attacks, Wilson soon began lobbying against “neocon” influence on Bush foreign policy, a concern shared by Wilson’s Turkish clients.

In February 2002, Plame volunteered Wilson for a CIA mission to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from Niger. After consulting with Scowcroft Group member Walter Kansteiner, Wilson agreed to the trip. Following his return, with support from Scowcroft’s ATC, Wilson became a spokesman for the Iraq antiwar movement. Meanwhile, a politician Abdurahman Alamoudi had been funding, Michigan Congressman David Bonoir, joined a peace mission to Iraq funded by Detroit businessman Shakir al-Khafaji, later discovered to be named in captured Iraqi documents as a conduit for Iraqi intelligence to bribe U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter.(19)

Following Al Gore’s December 2002 announcement that he would not run in 2004, Wilson shifted his support to John Kerry’s Presidential campaign and became the point man in an intelligence community campaign to discredit Bush’s Iraq policy. In conjunction with intelligence agents in Italy, Germany, France, and Britain and factions of the American intelligence community, Wilson began anonymously leaking claims to sympathetic press that Bush had relied on forged documents to make the case against Iraq, an allegation later proven false. Meanwhile, Wilson was openly blaming Israeli influence for Bush’s Iraq policy in articles and speeches. Then after Wilson openly began publishing his forgery allegations in his own name, he began claiming that the Bush administration had targeted his wife Plame in retaliation, an allegation later proven false. In September, Wilson spoke at rallies for antiwar group MoveOn.org, an organization originally founded to support the Clinton administration, petitioning Congress to cut off military funding for the Iraq War.

Meanwhile in August, Abdurahman Alamoudi was stopped in London en route to Damascus while carrying $340,000 in cash that Libyan President Muammar Qadhafi had given him to fund Al Qaeda’s attempt to destabilize Saudi Arabia by assassinating Crown Prince Abdullah. In September, Alamoudi was arrested in the United States for accepting $10,700 from the Libyan Mission to the United Nations. The subsequent investigation revealed that he had funneled at least $1 million to Al Qaeda and that he had power of attorney for 22 family members of people detained in Guantanamo Bay for suspicion of Al Qaeda ties.(20)

Mohammed Alamoudi, Joseph Wilson, and Hani Masri Support Hillary’s Presidential Campaigns

After Abdurahman Alamoudi was arrested, Mohammed Alamoudi filed libel suits in 2005(21) and again in 2010(22) to defend himself against charges of financing Al Qaeda and of hunting down his daughter in order to have her stoned, respectively. Meanwhile Mohammed, whose lobbying firm retained former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, began funding Hillary’s Presidential aspirations. Mohammed Alamoudi has been identified as one of the donors who contributed betweeen $5 and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation,(23) following an announcement that he would raise $20 million over 10 years to the foundation.(24)

Meanwhile, Alamoudi’s old office mate Joseph Wilson had started a New York-based investment firm called Jarch Capital in 2007, while he traveled with Bill Clinton to Africa on Clinton Foundation activity and promoted Hillary’s 2008 campaign.(25) Once Hillary became Secretary of State, Wilson became an unofficial State Department advisor on Africa. Hillary’s emails show that Wilson lobbied her via Sidney Blumenthal to intervene on behalf of one of his clients, Symbion Power.(26) A small federal agency Clinton chaired, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, subsequently gave a $47.7 millon U.S. government contract to Symbion in 2010. In 2013, after Clinton left office, Symbion received an additional $1.8 billion from the Obama administration for its Power Africa initiative. Wilson and Symbion subsequently had a falling-out, with Wilson suing Symbion for unpaid consulting fees and Symbion complaining that Wilson’s emails were an embarrassment to them and that he did nothing to earn them new business.

Clinton 2000 campaign donor Hani Masri also contributed between $100,001 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation.(27) Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign gave him the nickname “HillRaiser” for his contributions to Hillary’s 2008 Presidential campaign, where he raised $100,000 for her in the first quarter of 2007 alone.(28)

Meanwhile, Huma Abedin has risen from Hillary’s intern to her closest advisor, so close that some commentators have called her “Hillary’s shadow”.(29) If Abedin’s background with the Muslim Brotherhood front MSA is any indication, Hillary’s shadow is very long.

[UPDATES with information not yet incorporated into this article:]

30. Richard Pollock, EXCLUSIVE: Clinton Foundation Got $100M From ‘Blood Minerals’ Firm, The Daily Caller, May 24, 2016, http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/24/exclusive-clinton-foundation-got-100m-from-blood-minerals-firm/

31. Robert Cribb, “Panama Papers: British-Canadian billionaire mysterious middleman in ‘corruption scheme’”, The Star, May 25, 2016, https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/05/25/panama-papers-british-canadian-billionaire-mysterious-middleman-in-corruption-scheme.html

32. Peter Byrne, “Key Hillary supporter’s offshore dealings surface in Panama Papers”, FOX News, May 27, 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/27/key-hillary-supporters-offshore-dealings-surface-in-panama-papers.html?intcmp=trending

33. Roger Stone, “It’s Time America Got Some Answers about Huma Abedin”, Breitbart, June 13, 2016, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/06/13/roger-stone-its-time-america-got-some-answers-about-huma-abedin/

NOTES

1. “ISRAEL FOES GIVE HIL 50G Muslim group backs Palestinian use of force”, New York Daily News, October 25, 2000, http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/israel-foes-give-hil-50g-muslim-group-backs-palestinian-force-article-1.881893

2. Oren Dorell, “Mosque that Boston suspects attended has radical ties”, USA Today, April 25, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/boston-mosque-radicals/2101411/

3. “Abdurahman Alamoudi Sentenced to Jail in Terrorism Financing Case”, U.S. Department of Justice, October 15, 2004, https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_698.htm

4. “Alamoudi Sentence Cut by Six Years”, Investigative Project on Terrorism, July 25, 2011, http://www.investigativeproject.org/3059/alamoudi-sentence-cut-by-six-years#

5. “Abdurahman Alamoudi”, DiscoverTheNetworks.org, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1311

6. Jocelyn Y. Stewart, “A Milestone for Muslims: Invitation for Los Angeles Groups to Celebrate the End of Ramadan at White House Shows Growing Acceptance of Islam”, Los Angeles Times, January 28, 1998, http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jan/28/local/me-12852

7. “Message on the Observance of Ramadan”, January 19, 1996, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I), U.S. Government Printing Office, 72, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/PPP-1996-book1/PPP-1996-book1-doc-pg72/content-detail.html

8. Lee Stranahan, “Hillary Clinton’s History: How Huma Abedin Went from Intern to Top Advisor”, Breitbart, February 16, 2016, http://washreport.com/go.php?bWlkZGxlZWFzdC5vcmd8fG1lcnx8aHR0cDovL3d3dy5icmVpdGJhcnQuY29tL2JpZy1nb3Zlcm5tZW50LzIwMTYvMDIvMTYvaGlsbGFyeXMtaGlzdG9yeS1ob3ctaHVtYS1hYmVkaW4td2VudC1mcm9tLWludGVybi10by10b3AtYWR2aXNlci8=

9. “Remarks by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Ramadan Celebration: The White House”, February 20, 1996, http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/files/original/5973a3bdd4de58d449aa2edd6ee54bcc.pdf

10. John Podhoretz, “Israel in the Balance: Arab-Americans’ Political Power Is on the Rise, While Jews Seem to Care Most about the Democratic Party”, New York Post, October 26, 2000, http://nypost.com/2000/10/26/israel-in-the-balance-arab-americans-political-power-is-on-the-rise-while-jews-seem-to-care-most-about-the-democratic-party/

11. “Liberal Mass. State Senator Jamie Eldridge working with & raising money from Muslim coalition tied to pro-terrorism, jihad, anti-Semitism: Group brags about meeting with Senator on Internet posts”, MassResistance, October 28, 2010, http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen/10d/eldridge/index.html

12. “American Muslim Alliance (AMA)”, DiscoverTheNetworks.org, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6372

13. “How Hillary Clinton Has Misled New Yorkers: Timeline”, November 4, 2000 Rick Lazio campaign release archived at FreeRepublic.com, https://web.archive.org/web/20030324005802/http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a046537497d.htm

14. Adam Nagourney and Dean E. Murphy, “Attack on Cole Is Raised as Issue in New York Race”, The New York Times, October 29, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/29/nyregion/attack-on-cole-is-raised-as-issue-in-new-york-race.html?pagewanted=all

15. Dean E. Murphy, “Mrs. Clinton Says She Will Return Money Raised by a Muslim Group”, The New York Times, October 26, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/26/nyregion/mrs-clinton-says-she-will-return-money-raised-by-a-muslim-group.html?pagewanted=all

16. Bob Port, “’Museum’ for Muslim Not Just a Typo—Rick Team”, New York Daily News, November 1, 2000, http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/museum-muslim-not-typo-rick-team-article-1.891102

17. Fedora, “What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa: Joseph Wilson’s Silent Partners”, FreeRepublic.com, October 25, 2004, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1256475/posts

18. John J. Loftus, “The Press on the BCCI-Bin Mahfouz-Bin Laden Intelligence Nexus”, https://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/the-bcci-bin-mahfouz-bin-laden-intelligence-nexus/

19. Inigo Gilmore and Charles Laurence, “Iraqis tried to bribe Scott Ritter with gold”, The Telegraph, May 4, 2003, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1429153/Iraqis-tried-to-bribe-Scott-Ritter-with-gold.html

20. “The al-Amoudi terror charges”, The Washington Times, October 5, 2003, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2003/oct/5/20031005-111130-4622r/

21. “Count the readers before suing for internet libel”, Out-Law.com, July 15, 2006, http://www.out-law.com/page-7002

22. “Ethiopian billionaire wins libel action in UK”, BBC, July 29, 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14345007

23. Danielle Ohl, Greg Gordon, and Tish Wells, “Foreign cash pours into Clinton foundation”, Miami Herald, February 18, 2015, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article10644023.html

24. “Clinton Cash: How TPLF appears in the picture $20 mil on the table with Al-Amoudi as go between”, The Ethiopia Observatory, April 26, 2015, https://ethiopiaobservatory.com/2015/04/26/clinton-cash-how-tplf-appears-in-the-picture-20-mil-on-the-table-with-al-amoudi-as-go-between/

25. Chuck Ross, “After An Email To Hillary, Company Directed By Ambassador Joe Wilson Was Awarded Africa Contract”, The Daily Caller, July 3, 2015, http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/03/after-an-email-to-hillary-company-directed-by-ambassador-joe-wilson-was-awarded-africa-contract/

26. Chuck Ross, “Emails Show Hillary Helped Friend Navigate Federal Contracts”, The Daily Caller, January 11, 2016, http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/11/emails-show-hillary-helped-friend-navigate-federal-contracts/

27. “Clinton Foundation Donors: Search”, The New York Times, December 24, 2011, http://projects.nytimes.com/clinton-donors/page/9

28. Jason Horowitz, “Hillary’s Peace-Seeking Palestinian Fund-Raiser”, Observer, May 15, 2007, http://observer.com/2007/05/hillarys-peaceseeking-palestinian-fundraiser/

29. Annie Karni, “Hillary’s shadow: After years as the former secretary of state’s loyal assistant, Huma Abedin is emerging as a campaign power center of her own.”, Politico, July 2, 2015, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-huma-abedin-119671

30. Richard Pollock, “EXCLUSIVE: Persian Gulf Sheikhs Gave Bill & Hillary $100 Million [VIDEO]”, The Daily Caller, May 11, 2016, http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/11/exclusive-persian-gulf-sheikhs-gave-bill-hillary-100-million/