We finish up Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.Swear it's just like reading about Boss Tweed at Tammany...

...On the afternoon of January 12, 2010, a devastating 7.0 earthquake shook the island nation of Haiti. In less than a minute, the violent tremors leveled an estimated 25,000 government and commercial buildings, more than 100,000 homes, and killed approximately 230,000 people.

When the earth stopped quaking, more than 1.5 million people were left living in makeshift tent camps. “In 30 seconds, Haiti lost 60 percent of its GDP,” said Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive. For a country whose history was plagued with natural disasters, corrupt leaders, and abject poverty, it must have seemed like the exclamation point on some sort of cruel natural joke.

The international charitable response from groups like the Salvation Army and the Red Cross was generous, as millions of people around the world wrote checks or donated via their cell phones. Foreign governments committed funds, too.

Days after the earthquake, Hillary Clinton was en route to Port-au-Prince to inspect the damage. To accommodate her, all flights to and from the island were halted for three hours. Hillary arrived on a Coast Guard C-130, along with American relief workers and a supply of toothpaste, mustard, and cigarettes her staff had purchased from US supermarkets the night before. She did not leave the airport, to avoid impeding rescue efforts, but declared her deep sympathy for the people of Haiti and offered assurances that America would be Haiti’s “friend, partner, and supporter,” with the State Department and USAID taking a front and center role in the relief effort.

Bill Clinton was soon on the ground in Haiti, too. He had been appointed a United Nations special envoy to the island in 2009 and traveled to Haiti regularly. With a cluster of cameras around him, Bill teared up as he described what he saw.

The Clintons’ close friend and confidante, Cheryl Mills, who was Hillary’s chief of staff and counselor at the State Department, was assigned responsibility for how the taxpayer money, directed through USAID, would be spent. 1 Within days, the State Department conceived and created a funnel that would direct the aid and relief money that would soon flood into the country. The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) was given the task of executing an action plan developed with the help of Haitian authorities and countries that were donating funds to the rebuilding effort. It was supposed to prioritize the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince, with a focus on restoring the economy and government services. 2

Bill was promptly appointed co-chair, along with Bellerive. Together, they constituted IHRC’s Executive Committee, giving them concentrated decision-making power. In this role Bill was ultimately responsible for the approval of any projects that would be funded by US taxpayer dollars or international organizations. Clinton and Bellerive would prove to work effectively together. As we will see, Bellerive would later go into business with members of the Clinton family in Haiti.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/part-5-of-5-clinton-cashrainforest.html