The Chinagate scandal of 1996 ... was an apparent scheme by the Clinton administration to sell seats on taxpayer-funded trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign.
Nolanda Hill, a business partner and confidante of the Clinton then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown testified in a court hearing during the litigation that the Clinton White House told Brown to “delay the [Judicial Watch] case by withholding the production of documents prior to the 1996 elections and to devise a way not to comply with the court’s orders.”
She also testified that Brown, who died in a plane crash during a trade mission to Bosnia, told her that Hillary conceived of the scheme to sell trade mission seats. Brown complained of being “Hillary’s blankety-blank tour guide.”
While there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, there never was a smoking gun. John Kerry was also involved earlier on with what appeared to be a pay-to-play operation and there is a good article on it at
The Spectator that summarizes it, but we deal with the later conspiracy.
~ Clinton friend Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie pleaded guilty to charges of violating campaign finance rules in exchange for having pending indictments dropped against him in Washington and Arkansas.
~ According to news reports in 1997, Democratic donor Johnny Chung received a $150,000 transfer from the Bank of China three days before he handed then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff a $50,000 check.
~ Johnny Chung first met the Clintons in 1992. From 1994 to 1996,
Chung visited the White House 49 times. Nearly half of those visits were authorized by the office of the First Lady. In one visit, Hillary met with Chung and his visiting delegation of Chinese businessmen from state-run companies.
~ Liu Chaoying was the
daughter of General Liu Huaqing (1916-2011) who arranged to give businessman and ally of the Clintons, Johnny Chung, $300,000 which was then donated to the DNC. The DNC
was later forced to return the money.
~ Then-Vice President Al Gore received political donations from Buddhist nuns who had taken a vow of poverty.
~ President Clinton admitted in 1997 that he invited major campaign donors to spend the night in the White House. The Clintons hosted 404 overnight guests.
~ During the investigation by the Department of Justice, about 120 people connected to “Chinagate” either fled the country or pleaded the Fifth Amendment to prevent testifying.
