EDITORIAL: Lining Bill’s pockets

With Election Day just a week away, the big lies continue to flow out of Hillary Clinton’s campaign via thousands of hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. In any other election year, these revelations would likely have sunk the Clinton campaign, but with the media fixated on Donald Trump, the polls remain remarkably close.

Can Mrs. Clinton limp to the finish line?

Just days before FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau is again looking at more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, WikiLeaks released a memo outlining how, during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation pushed donors to steer millions of dollars of business to former President Bill Clinton through speaking arrangements, consulting gigs and other forms of revenue.

The leaked memo was written by top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band while Mr. Band was playing a pivotal role in the Clinton Foundation and serving as president of his own corporate consulting firm, Teneo. The memo detailed how he was able to raise money for the foundation from major corporations — corporations that were clients of his firm — while also persuading them to provide the former president with personal income.

Mr. Band dubbed the racket “Bill Clinton Inc.” and outlined how Teneo served as “agents, lawyers, managers, and implementers” for the former president, helping him bring in $50 million in compensation, as well an additional $66 million in future contracts. Mr. Band denies any conflict of interest. He says the memo demonstrates that “Teneo worked to encourage clients, where appropriate, to support the Clinton Foundation because of the good work that it does around the world.” He also says that “It also clearly shows that Teneo never received any financial benefit or benefit of any kind from doing so.”

But that’s nonsense. The whole unseemly operation was intended to give corporations and other wealthy supporters paid access to a former president, as well as to a secretary of state and current potential presidential nominee.

A Clinton campaign spokesman declined comment other than to say that it was “hacked by the Russian government and weaponized by WikiLeaks.” Note the absence of any outright denial about the authenticity of the documents.

The latest revelations make a mockery of the Clinton camp’s repeated insistence that there was nothing shady or untoward about the family’s charitable foundation. Expect the WikiLeak drip, drip, drip to drag well into a Clinton presidency, should she win the election. Expect the lies and dissembling to continue, also.