Remember the Clinton Global Initiative, the arm of the Clinton Foundation that Clinton supporters claimed helps solve “the world’s most pressing challenges,” and which detractors noted was yet another handy tool to line the pockets of the Clintons and their permanent traveling army of political toadies?
Well, evidently all the world’s most pressing challenges have been solved, as the Clinton Foundation is shutting down the Clinton Global Initiative:
In a “mass layoff” event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of “pay for play” which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta “If this story gets out, we are screwed.”
Filed as mandated by the Department of Labor’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, on January 12, the Clinton Foundation’s Veronika Shiroka advised the DOL that as part of a “Plant Layoff” it would layoff 22 workers on April 15, with reason for the dislocation stated as “Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative.” The layoffs are part of the Clinton plan put in motion ahead of the presidential election, to offset a storm of criticism regarding pay-to-play allegations during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
For those unable to disentangle CGI from the other money-laundering arms of the Clinton empire, here’s a look back at a few of their greatest hits:
- Former NBA player Jason “famous for being gay” Collins
- Hernando de Soto, chairman of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru (listed here because he sticks out like a sore thumb among the lefties)
- David Miliband, former UK Labour MP and brother of former Labour leader Ed Miliband
- Ben Osborne, the editor-in-chief of slideshow-infested sports site Bleacher Report
- Nancy E. Pfund, founder and managing partner of DBL Partners, an investor in (among others) Podesta Group client SolarCity
- Becky Quick, co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box
- Matteo Renzi, the (then current) Prime Minister of Italy
- Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood
- Juan Manuel Santos, the President of Colombia
- Aleksandar Vucic, the Prime Minister of Serbia
- Casey Wasserman, the chairman and CEO of “Wasserman, a leading sports, entertainment and lifestyle marketing and management agency”
(And I compiled that list of names mostly as a bookmark for myself for further research. What the hell is a guy from Bleacher Report doing at a conference with the Prime Minister of Serbia? Could it have something to do with their involvement with Qatar’s Word Cup bid?)
Anyway, there was already talk that the Clintons were going to shut down CGI when they expected Hillary to win the presidency. With Clinton Foundation donations taking a nosedive following Hillary’s loss, CGI was just another financial, political and legal liability for them. As one Zero Hedge commenter put it, “I’m sure the shredders are running 24×7 tonight.”