Was The Clinton Foundation Behind Shady Middle Eastern Arms Deals?
AUGUST 23, 2016 By Bre Payton
Shortly after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the crown prince of Bahrain, a Clinton Foundation donor, the United States sold his country a ton of arms.
A newly released batch of emails reveals that Clinton met with the crown prince in 2009, who has personally donated over $32 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, only after a Clinton Foundation bigwig pressured her into doing so.
Just after this meeting took place, Clinton’s State Department “significantly increased arms export authorizations to the country’s autocratic government, even as that nation moved to crush pro-democracy protests,” the International Business Times reports.
Throughout her tenure as secretary, Clinton’s State Department gave the green light to sell $630 million worth of arms to Bahrain’s military — a huge increase from $219 million worth of weapons the United States sold to the country between 2006-2008.
The increase coincided with the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, when Bahrain military forces tear-gassed civilians to squelch the demonstrations. During this period, the United States sold $70,000 worth of “toxicological agents” to the autocratic regime — a huge increase from the $700 sold the period before.
Clinton’s State Department also tried to quietly sell armored vehicles and missiles to Bahrain, saying there was no need for “formal notifications” or a “public explanation” as the amount of arms “didn’t meet the threshold” to require such formalities.
The plan was temporarily foiled after members of Congress expressed human rights concerns, but a year later the deal was back on track after the crown prince met with Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
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