Jack Kelly Sunday

Wow.  In this week's column the Post-Gazette's Jack Kelly shows us how little research he actually has done in the past few weeks - and how much right-wing media spin he simply swallows and regurgitates up for his readers.

In doing so he also (now let's not be surprised here) makes some significant factual errors that should have been corrected before the column went to print.

Jack begins his error filled smear:

The Southern District of New York is the lead of three U.S. attorneys’ offices investigating the Clinton Foundation, a recently retired deputy director of the FBI told the Daily Caller. The Clinton Foundation is headquartered in New York. It was begun in Little Rock, Ark., to raise funds for the Clinton library. The office in Washington, D.C., may focus on when Hillary was secretary of state.

And then he starts the errors. For example this is his very next paragraph:

The Clinton Foundation has received more than $2 billion in contributions. More than 1,000 donors are foreigners. The foundation won’t disclose their names or amounts donated. [Emphasis added.]

Which is most interesting because when you go to the Clinton Foundation website, you can find this page that lists donor names and donor information.  To be sure, specific amounts aren't listed but resting the entire argument on that is

For example, I can see that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is at the top of the "Greater than $25,000,000" list.

But that's a foundation.  Maybe they don't disclose the names of individuals, right?

Wrong.  I see the name "Tom Golisano" in the "$10,000,001 to $25,000,000" category.  He's a Republican, by the way.

Maybe they don't disclose the names of foreigners who are donors, right?

Wrong.  Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid is on the "1,000,001 to $5,000,000" list of donors.

So Jack's assessment that the foundation won't disclose names or amounts is simply untrue.

Why was that not caught before this column went to print?

Then there's this:

Few of the funds raised have been spent on charitable works. In 2013, for instance, the Clinton Foundation took in $140 million, but spent just $9 million (6.4 percent) on direct aid. A typical charity devotes about 75 percent of receipts to aid.

This has been shown to have been false for some time.

For instance Factcheck.org looked into this June of 2015.  It was framed in an attack by then Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, who said basically what Jack said above.  Here's how Factcheck analysed, more than a year ago:

Asked for backup, the CARLY for America super PAC noted that the Clinton Foundation’s latest IRS Form 990 shows total revenue of nearly $149 million in 2013, and total charitable grant disbursements of nearly $9 million (see page 10). That comes to roughly 6 percent of the budget going to grants. And besides those grants, the super PAC said, “there really isn’t anything that can be categorized as charitable.”

That just isn’t so. The Clinton Foundation does most of its charitable work itself.

And:

Katherina Rosqueta, the founding executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania, described the Clinton Foundation as an “operating foundation.”

“There is an important distinction between an operating foundation vs. a non-operating foundation,” Rosqueta told us via email. “An operating foundation implements programs so money it raises is not designed to be used exclusively for grant-making purposes. When most people hear ‘foundation’, they think exclusively of a grant-making entity. In either case, the key is to understand how well the foundation uses money — whether to implement programs or to grant out to nonprofits — [to achieve] the intended social impact (e.g., improving education, creating livelihoods, improving health, etc.).”

So now we know that Jack Kelly doesn't understand the distinction, either.  Even though, in his criticism, he wrote as if he had full understanding - which he doesn't.

How did this get by the fact-checkers at the Post-Gazette?

Then there's this fresh pile of Kelly-poop:

An email obtained by Judicial Watch Aug. 9 indicates the head of the Clinton Global Initiative urged Ms. Abedin and Cheryl Mills, then Hillary’s top aides at the State Department, to connect Lebanese businessman Gilbert Chagoury, a major Clinton Foundation donor, with a senior State Department official. Mr. Chagoury had been convicted of laundering funds for a Nigerian dictator.

Wait...what??

It was only 7 days ago that Jack Kelly wrote:

A top official at the Clinton Foundation told State Department aides to give special access to a Lebanese businessman who pled guilty to laundering funds for a Nigerian dictator, emails released Tuesday revealed. The dictator, Gilbert Chagoury, pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009.

The was corrected a few hours after I hit "publish" on this blog post.  I'm not specifically saying the latter triggered the former, but yea it certainly looks like I made the P-G issue another correction to a Jack Kelly column.

But let me ask you Jack.  Why no reference or explanation to your readers about your previous factual error?  Is your plan to just plow forward and hope that no one notices your previous factual error?

Then this less than fresh pile-o'-Jackpoop:

Hillary approved a deal that gave Russia control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium assets after $145 million was contributed to the Clinton Foundation, reported Peter Schweizer of the Government Accountability Institute.

We dealt with this less than a month ago.  This story was debunked more than a year ago.

Do I really need to retrace my steps because Jack Kelly's rewarming the left overs of his discredited conspiracy theories?

Can't he find any new conspiracy theories for me to fact-check?

And finally:

WHY CAN'T SOMEONE AT THE P-G DO THIS BEFORE PUBLICATION?  WHY DO I HAVE TO KEEP DOING IT AFTERWARDS?