Under Hillary Clinton, State Dept. Approved $165 Billion in Arms Sales to Countries With One Thing in Common

Under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. State Department approved $165 billion worth of arms sales to 20 nations whose governments donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, according to an International Business Times investigation.

The arms sales “represented nearly double the value of American arms sales made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the same period of President George W. Bush’s second term,” the report states.

Credit: AFP/Getty Images

In one of the biggest transactions, the U.S. sent “advanced fighter jets” to Saudi Arabia, a sale totaling $29 billion. The deal angered Israel and seemingly contradicted America’s concerns about human rights in the kingdom.

Clinton’s State Department also reportedly approved sales to Qatar, Kuwait, Algeria, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

In the years leading up to Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reportedly donated $10 million — at least — to the Clinton Foundation.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz looks on during an extraordinary summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Mecca on August 14, 2012. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

The International Business Times reveals more from its investigation:

Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing -- the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15 -- contributed$900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an International Business Times investigation has found.

[…]

The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase incompleted sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House.

The report, which might further frustrate the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, does not provide any evidence suggesting the donations and the arms sales were somehow connected.

Read the full report here.

(H/T: The Hill)

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