Clntons tried to pressure scholarship program o accept Chelsea’s boyfriend
Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to bully a prestigious scholarship program into selecting Chelsea Clinton’s then-boyfriend and then sought "payback" when they were resisted, according to a former top foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama.
The episode took place nearly 19 years ago but has fresh resonance after revelations last month of multimillion-dollar bribes paid by parents to get their children into elite colleges, ….
Trina Vargo, a veteran U.S. adviser on Ireland, founded the George J. Mitchell Scholarship in 2000. It was named after the former senator who brokered the talks that led to the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. Vargo said that Bill Clinton intervened in the first year of the scholarship, when Kane, whose 3.19 grade-point average was much weaker than those of the top candidates, had failed to make the final selection round.
President Clinton, who was in his last weeks in the White House, called Mitchell to express his displeasure, according to Vargo in her new book Shenanigans: The U.S.-Ireland Relationship in Uncertain Times. He had submitted a letter of recommendation for Kane, who had already landed an internship in the Clinton White House during his relationship with Chelsea.
Vargo told the Washington Examiner that the timing of Clinton’s call, which came while the program was choosing its 12 scholarship awardees from a group of 20 finalists, was a blatant attempt to game the selection process. “There’s no way to see that as anything other than an attempt to influence a situation that hadn’t been finalized yet,” she said.
…. “In light of the college admissions scandal, I don’t think it’s very unusual for people who have money or influence to use what means they have, whether it’s for their children or friends."
While no money was involved in the Clintons' attempt to procure a scholarship for Kane, by bowing to their wishes Vargo and her program would have been well-placed to benefit in future years from the largesse of the former first couple and their influential network of Irish American fundraisers.
Bill Clinton's press secretary, Angel Urena, called accusations of nepotism "baseless and patently false."
Vargo said: “If he had called George Mitchell after we had selected the twelve finalists just to say that the organization doesn’t know what they’re doing because they didn’t pick him, that would be fine from my perspective. The timing … it was meant to influence decisions.”
A month after Kane failed to make the shortlist, Vargo ran into Hillary Clinton at a reception at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. “It was immediately clear to me that she knew I was the person she viewed as responsible for Chelsea’s boyfriend not getting the scholarship,” Vargo wrote in Shenanigans. “For those few seconds, her eyes closed to a slit, the way they do when one is unhappy and sizing up a person.”
And on and on. When Hillary returned to power eight years later after Obama named her Secretary of state she and her husband made it clear that they hadn’t forgotten Vargo’s slight eight years before:, Bill pulled out from a conference at the last minute, leaving Vargo with a bock of non-refundable hotel rooms, bu Hillary went farther:
Vargo wrote: “In 2011, Mary Lou Hartman, former director of the Mitchell Scholarship program, bumped into [Clinton adviser Melanne] Verveer, who made clear that I was persona non grata ... Just months later, the State Department informed us they were totally eliminating all funding for the Mitchell Scholarship program in the next State Department budget.”
State Department emails found on Hillary Clinton's private server show her senior staff were attentive to the Mitchell Scholarship’s finances, which represented 0.1% of the State Department’s foreign exchange education program budget.
After Vargo tried to renew the group's funding by meeting with members of Congress, State Department aide Kris Balderson wrote to Hillary Clinton: "She will not succeed."
Lots more in the full article, but the point is, the Clintons are a pair of two-bit lowlifes, who remember and pursue their enemies, forever
