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9/16/16, "Trump meets with Haitian-American community in Miami," Haiti Sentinel, Samuel Maxime, Editor in Chief, Little Haiti, Florida (Samuel Maxime is a Haitian-born citizen living in the United States. He founded The Haiti Sentinel to bring Haitian issues to an English language audience.)
"On Friday, the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, met with the Haitian-American community in Miami’s Little Haiti.
It would be a historic first for those descended from Haiti as it was the first time a U.S. presidential candidate had come to listen to their specific concerns.
Out the gate, the attendees began expressing their displeasure with the foreign policies of former President Bill Clinton in the 90s and the Hillary Clinton State Department under President Barack Obama.
2010 Offenses by Clintons in Haiti
Earthquake
On January 12, 2010 a massive 7.3 earthquake struck Haiti, devastating the island and killing over 300,000 people. Haiti’s problems were severe and the devastation created new opportunities for predators to take full advantage of the situation and use the tragedy to prey upon the victims for personal gain and profit. The country was declared open for business and while the Haitian people suffered the Clintons cashed in.
Hillary Clinton ran the State Department, Bill Clinton, a year prior in 2009, was name Head of the United Nations Envoy to Haiti. He also became co-Chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) which had more than $13 billion in pledged relief and reconstruction money. This money was routed to friends and donors of the Clintons and to this day, analysts have a difficult time understanding what actually was accomplished.
In 2015, two attorneys, Newton Louis St Juste and André Michel, filed a legal challenge with the General Secretariat of the United Nations to clarify the legal status of former United States President Bill Clinton, the U.N. Special Envoy for Haiti to the Secretary General and Co-Chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) from 2009 to 2011.
In the letter addressed Monday, January 5 to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the lawyers informed him that a court action was initiated on April 10, 2014 against former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton at [Haiti’s] Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes, to shed light on the destination and uses of funds transferred by the international community through the IHRC to help the Haitian people after the January 12, 2010 earthquake.
Cholera
On October 14, 2010, just months after the earthquake, Haiti faced a deadly threat never before seen on the island, cholera. United Nations peacekeepers in the central town of Mirebalais, 50 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake had been dumping their waste into the island’s primary tributary, the Artibonite River. It is a body of water that spreads throughout the island in waterways used for bathing, cleaning, cooking and drinking. The disease infected tens of thousands and in just a few months killed hundreds.
Despite dozens of reports and research done from institutions such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Yale University, the UN denied, for five years, responsibility for the outbreak and in any case claimed immunity from prosecution or lawsuit
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It took the urge of a bipartisan group of 158 members of Congress, led by Republican Congresswoman Mia Love and Democratic Congressman Conyers, to write a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, decrying the U.S.’s silence in the face of the denial of the United Nations.
The United Nations finally in August 2016 admitted to its “role” in the introduction of the cholera bacteria, from South Asia and the most virulent kind. Stunning Haitians was the silence of the former president, Bill Clinton throughout this time and even to today.
Having been the Head of the U.N. Envoy to Haiti when the disease broke out, Clinton’s silence was striking and disheartening.
Elections
On December 7, 2010 a group called Mouvement Tet Kale organized riots in the cities of Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes, Haiti.
They burned buildings and cars. They were reacting to election results that placed their candidate, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly also known as Tet Kale, out of the presidential runoffs in 4th place. About 3 months after those riots, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) would do something against long-standing policy: it would pay a purely political organization $100,000 [USD].
In the interim, between the payments and the riots, the General Director of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) says Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, changed the election results. Pierre Louis Opont, who was DG of the CEP in 2010 and spoke as President of the CEP in 2015, said on July 2 that the election results, ultimately published in those 2010 elections, were not the actual results."...
[Ed. note: For those interested, a May 2015 Politico Magazine article on Haiti and the Clintons does describe Hillary taking charge of the 2010 election results which by early 2011 still hadn't been finalized. The candidate she wanted hadn't received the most votes. She basically talked his main opponent into dropping out by flattering him: page 2: "(Hillary) Clinton met with the top three candidates at the U.S. ambassador’s mansion in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Then she went to the grounds of the destroyed national palace to confront a recalcitrant Préval....
Former Prime Minister Bellerive, who was at the meeting, told me. “She said, ‘Look René … I care about you, because you are my only friend there.…What is happening in the international community is that they are making you appear as a little crook that wants to control the elections and put a puppet in the national palace. We cannot accept that. Because, in a way, you are the father of the democracy. You are the only president that was elected two times…that never [fled] the country, that never killed people, that enforced liberty of press. She went into a story I’ve never heard about what President Préval represented and I see that guy...deflate. And he was not anymore in a fight mood. So my [election files] that I brought were never used. At the end of it, when we separated, I realized that the fight was over.”"
The Clintons' choice, Martelly, was elected president two months later: (Page 2): "Many in Haiti thought the Clintons’ influence had reached its peak when, shortly after Martelly took office, he selected one of Bill Clinton’s top aides, Garry Conille, to be his prime minister. Conille had been Bill Clinton’s chief of staff at the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy, and many in the Haitian political elite assumed that the Clintons had imposed him to keep an eye on the unpredictable new president. If that was the idea, it failed. Conille lasted just four months. He was replaced by Laurent Lamothe, Martelly’s longtime business partner."... From page one of the article: "Over the past two decades, the once-and-perhaps-future first couple repeatedly played a key role in Haiti’s politics, helping to pick its national leaders and driving hundreds of millions of dollars in private aid, investment and U.S. taxpayer money toward its development."]
(continuing): "Clinton needed a friend in the Haitian National Palace in order to allow her husband, their Foundation, and the IHRC to operate as it pleased. This president also awarded a rare and lucrative gold mining contract to a company boarded by Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham."
Added: For those interested, the May 2015 Politico Magazine article on the Clintons and Haiti ("The King and Queen of Haiti") doesn't deny Tony Rodham's involvement which made news when it was reported by Peter Schweizer. The Politico author working on the article in Haiti decided to check with the owner of the mine and was told Rodham was a "financial advisor" and not a board member. page 6.
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| Haiti 2015, Failed Bill Clinton project |
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Miami Herald:
9/16/16, "Donald Trump to Haitian voters: I want to be your greatest champion," Miami Herald, Jacqueline Charles
"Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump met with a small group of Haitian Americans Friday in Little Haiti, telling them that they share “a lot of common values” and the country deserved better than Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, Trump said, failed Haiti when it needed help the most.
“Clinton was responsible for doing things a lot of the Haitian people are not happy with,” Trump said from prepared remarks, referring to the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. “Taxpayer dollars intended for Haiti and the earthquake victims went to a lot of the Clinton cronies.”
Later, Trump told the crowd that he had come to “listen and learn” and to build a new relationship with the community.
“Whether you vote for me or not I really want to be your biggest champion,” he said.
There was no news from the candidate during the 26-minute discussion, in which attendees questioned him about his position on school choice. They also complained about the Clintons’ two-decade-plus involvement in Haiti.
“I didn’t understand, now I understand it,” Trump said in reference to many Haitians’ feelings about the Clintons....
Trump was introduced by Georges Saati, a controversial blogger in the Haitian community, who told the room that this was the first time that a U.S. presidential candidate had visited the community.
The remarks earned Trump applause from attendees, several of whom said they went because they were curious and wanted to hear what Trump had to say. Most of their remarks to the candidate focused on their personal disappointment over the lack of progress in Haiti despite the involvement of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“The fact that he came here is everything for us as Haitians,” said Monique DieuJuste, 41, a Lauderhill residents who works as a registered respiratory therapist.
DieuJuste, who is registered with no party affiliation, said she plans to vote for Trump because the “Clintons haven’t done anything for us.”
As for Trump’s controversial stances on immigration, which many Haitians remain concerned about, DieuJuste said while she too has her concerns, he won her over with his support for possibly sending a Haitian-American as ambassador to Haiti should he be elected.
Attendees included Haitian doctors, lawyers and former Haiti government ministers. Ringo Cayard, a Haitian community activist who help put the event together, said it’s time for the Haitian-American vote to stop being taken for granted.
“I want them to listen to Trump and to listen to Hillary and then decide,” he said.
Leonce Thelusma, a former Haitian finance minister and a registered Republican, said his support for Trump will depend on the candidate’s stance on helping Haiti and Haitians. Clinton, he said, has little to show for her and her husband’s involvement in Haiti, where most recently Bill Clinton served as U.N. special envoy and czar of the recovery effort after the quake.
“No Haitian has benefited from that,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that we don’t have any institutions in Haiti that can call him and demand that he gives an account of the [earthquake] money.”"
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9/16/16, at Trump meeting in Little Haiti, a former Haitian Senate President speaks about Bill Clinton's 1994 invasion of Haiti, and how both Clintons' longtime intervention there has had tragic consequences for Haiti:
Description on You Tube page:
"Published on Sep 16, 2016"
"Former Haitian President of the Senate is speaking out to tell the truth about
Clinton Foundation at a Trump event! The former president said that
Clinton was trying to buy him....
"(In 1994) He spent 4 hours with Bill Richardson to tell Bill Clinton not to invade Haiti. A week later the embassy called him and told him that Bill Clinton has a messenger for him. He came and told him to sign with Bill Clinton, join his movement and Clinton will make him the richest man in Haiti. He told him he is a principled man and he will not sell out. He just challenged Trump to ask Hillary Clinton to publish the audit of all the money they have stolen from Haiti in 2010."...
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Extra about Clinton Foundation from May 4, 2015 Politico Magazine article, "The King and Queen of Haiti," Politico Magazine, Jonathan M. Katz (7 pages total)
page 6: "Others have questioned a $500,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation made by the Algerian government after the 2010 earthquake, and a $900,000 donation by Boeing to support Haitian schools at the same time Secretary Clinton was lobbying the Russian government to buy that company’s planes. The foundation has acknowledged it violated an ethics agreement with the Obama White House by taking the Algerian donation. Boeing indeed won a major contract, according to the Washington Post.
But, though tracing the money in Haiti is difficult, there are no solid indications that the donations went anywhere other than where they were supposed to go. A Clinton Foundation spokesman says the Algerian money went into a $16.4 million direct aid fund, which in turn provided money to groups including Partners in Health, the operating fund of the IHRC, and Sean Penn’s J/P HRO.
Boeing’s money went to a now-defunct NGO named Architecture for Humanity, which rebuilt a quake-damaged school in the impoverished Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Bel-Air. I visited on a recent school day. While the new building does not scream luxury—there is no library or computer lab, barely any furniture, and the school building does not get electricity—it does seem to be a well-put-together piece of construction, certainly by Haitian standards....The foundation says some money also went to teacher training.
Following the money in Clinton Foundation projects is often a challenge. In recent weeks, under media pressure, the foundation has admitted that its bookkeeping and transparency have been lacking at times. Last week, after days of questions and press reports about the Clinton Foundation’s work in various countries, acting CEO Maura Pally posted a statement explaining the foundation was committed to transparency: “Yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future.”
Even poring over documents doesn’t tell you much: In 2013, the most recent tax year for which disclosures are available, the foundation raised $295 million overall and spent $223 million—of which it says $197 million, or 88 percent, went to “program services.” That intentionally vague term, used universally by NGOs across the aid world, includes anything that can be justifiably linked to specific projects including travel, office expenses and salaries.
Clinton Foundation officials told me that, “unlike most organizations operating in Haiti, the Clinton Foundation and its Haiti program do not charge overhead expenses or collect an administrative fee for our work.”"
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