Cleveland
The book Clinton Cash was on the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks last year and sold roughly 200,000 copies. It tells the story of how Bill and Hillary Clinton made an estimated $229,319,855 between the time they left the White House in 2001 and 2014. That includes fees of more than $500,000 that Bill Clinton received for 11 speeches while she was secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.
It’s a powerful story of money-grubbing and sleaze. And now it’s been made into a 65-minute, impeccably researched documentary narrated by Peter Schweizer, the book’s author.
The movie is fast-paced and intense. And its impact on audiences is likely to be highly unfavorable to Hillary’s hopes of winning the presidency. But there is a problem: getting it in front of audiences in the first place. “A lot of people don’t have the time or the inclination to read the book,” Schweizer says.
Clinton Cash, the movie, has no budget for promotion and advertising and no distributor (unlike the leftist movies by Michael Moore). It’s not that Schweizer and producer Steve Bannon are raking in money either. Schweizer wasn’t paid. Nor was he sent to far-flung sites to do stand-ups. The film relies on b-roll—that is, clips from the countries in which the Clintons and their made a fortune.
If you’re quick, you can see the movie for free. It will be available on Breitbart.com over the weekend in what amounts to its premiere. During the Republican convention, it was screened for a few dozen journalists along with some interested parties from both the left and the right.
The plan is for DVDs of Clinton Cash to be sold online for less than $5. And if that doesn’t get it around the country, the alternative is put it on YouTube, where everyone could see it without having to pay.
There was an effort to screen the movie in a public park in Philadelphia next week near the scene of the Democratic convention and the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the party’s presidential candidate. But city officials nixed that.
What’s striking about the movie is its lack of partisanship. It’s unfriendly to the Clintons, but “this is not just a Republican issue,” Schweizer says. It was a group of supporters of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, who sought to have Clinton Cash play in Philly.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and ABC News did stories related to the book after conducting their own investigations. “But the mainstream media has never held the Clintons accountable,” according to Schweizer.
First the book and now the movie describes the deals that enriched the Clintons and their friends. Donors to the Clinton Foundation and those who paid as much as $750,000 for a speech by Bill Clinton were treated well by the State Department in decisions involving business deals in Russia, Haiti, Colombia, and several African countries run by dictators by the State Department—that’s the core of Clinton Cash.
If all else fails, Schweizer hopes word of mouth will lead people to the movie. A paperback edition of the book is slated for publication next week. Its subtitle is: “The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Made Bill and Hillary Clinton Rich.”
