The Clinton-Qatar-Hamas ConnectionIt’s not easy to understand the Middle East, but one facet can be found in following the money. One open-wallet nation, Qatar, has been chummy with both Hamas terrorists and U.S. politicians. Our chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison provides the details in our Investigative Bulletin about Qatar’s connections with a former U.S. president and a secretary of state.
Shortly after the world began learning the details of the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, Hillary Clinton published a note of support on X for “everyone affected by the horrific attacks by Hamas” and expressed “strong support of our ally,” Israel. The former secretary of state had nothing to say about one of Hamas’s key allies, the energy-rich kingdom of Qatar, and not surprisingly: Qatar is not only an important friend of the U.S. in the region but also for many years was a generous patron of Bill and Hillary Clinton. As Judicial Watch President Tom Fittonnoted on X, Qatar funneled money to the Clintons when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state and she “hid this until disclosures from Wikileaks and pressure from Judicial Watch forced her to admit to tens of millions of previously hidden foreign cash payments to ‘Clinton Inc.’”
Slipping money into the hands of slippery politicians—a time-honored tradition in the Middle East and elsewhere—of course is not the same as providing significant ongoing state support for a murderous terrorist organization. But the Clinton experience does provide a snapshot of the Qatari influence operation and a warning about what Qatar may be up to elsewhere, including in the United States.
The Qatar-Clinton money trail begins around 2008, when the Clinton Foundation—under pressure due to Mrs. Clinton’s imminent ascent to State Department leadership—published a list of donors. Among them: Qatar, listed as contributing between $1 million and $5 million. A Clinton Foundation spokesman later acknowledged that Qatar had been sending the Clintons money “since 2002.”
Pressure mounted on the Clintons in 2014 with the publication of a Judicial Watch investigative report disclosing that Bill Clinton had earned upward of $48 million in speaking fees around the globe, including from Arab countries, while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state. “Former President Clinton trotted the globe collecting huge speaking fees while his wife presided over U.S. foreign policy,” Tom Fitton noted at the time.
In 2016, a leaked Wikileaks email revealed that five years earlier, in 2011, the Clintons had received a $1 million gift from Qatar. That gift was never reported by the Clintons, a clear violation of the disclosure agreement the Clintons had signed with the State Department when Mrs. Clinton took the helm. Soon after the 2011 gift, a high-ranking Qatari official pressed the Clinton circle for “five minutes” with the former president.
Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits also turned up more evidence of Clinton conflicts of interest, including the courting of Qatar. A Judicial Watch FOIA disclosure in late 2016 revealed a list sent by a Clinton Foundation senior adviser to a high-ranking aide to Secretary of State Clinton; the list noted more than 200 foreign leaders to be invited to the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting, including the emir of Qatar, the Qatari prime minister, and the minister of foreign affairs................
https://www.judicialwatch.org/the-clinton-qatar-hamas-connection/
