What Would a Braver Man Do?

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

It seems another Clinton insider may be running for his life. And considering all the dead bodies that have popped up around the Clintons like the skeletons in Poltergeist 3, this scenario is not entirely implausible. Except, if the reports are true, this one is a special case: The latest wouldbe victim of the Clinton hit team is none other than Eric Braverman, the former CEO of the Clinton Foundation.

     Braverman's name may not be a household one (and, if the completely useless MSM had its way, and it will, it never will be) but it ought to be. Braverman was installed by Chelsea Clinton as sort of an Inspector General of the Foundation to investigate the accounting irregularities she'd found in 2011. Getting the Foundation's board to install him without actually telling the board why she wanted him to be her inside man was tantamount to a war the former First Daughter was waging on her own parents' corrupt Foundation.
     Apparently, Chelsea had busted open the books when she was officially named an officer of the CF and her name was added to the Foundation's full name. She'd allegedly found serious conflicts of interest such as her parents accepting upwards of a billion in bribes from third world dictators given ostensibly to rebuild villages. Chelsea apparently discovered only $53,000,000 of that billion was actually diverted to that end and the rest wound up in her parent's bulging pockets.

     The young Yale-educated CEO lasted for just a year and a half, even though his tenure was all but assured through to next year, at the helm of the Clinton Foundation before abruptly resigning March of last year and not giving any reason as to why. Requests for comment were forwarded by Braverman to the Foundation which, of course, has been typically closed-mouthed. Now we're hearing not so much reports but mutters on social media that Eric Braverman has within the last 48 hours or so sought asylum at the Russian embassy in New York City. It seems the source for this article, according to time stamps and the sheer number of people linking back it, seems to be some obscure website called Western Sentinel, which in itself offers no linkage corroborating this claim. And other websites reporting on this merely copy and paste the original WS article.

     According to the Russian Federation's Law on Refugees, asylum is issued to those seeking “asylum or protection from persecution or a real threat of becoming a victim of persecution” in their home country for “social-political activities or convictions that do not contradict the democratic principles recognized by the international community and norms of international law.” Russia is one of the most sought-after nations for political asylum (Ed Snowden showed us that) but it's rarely given.
      Again, take this "news" for what it's worth. The only things we know for sure is that Braverman just vanished on the 23rd and immediately thereafter we began hearing reports that he'd sought asylum on a visa application as the Russian embassy does not grant asylum to those requesting it by snail mail or electronically. Therefore, before we can ascertain whether or not this is true, that Braverman's a wanted if not a hunted man (and recall the sheer body count just from this past summer of those who'd run afoul of the Clintons and their goons in the DNC), we must first go back five years and see what precipitated this.

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it..."

     He hasn't tweeted in two weeks, which isn't unusual as he wasn't a very prolific tweeter. He's listed as a lecturer at his alma mater Yale which tells us nothing. All anyone knows is that Braverman has been seen nowhere since Sunday October 23rd, which was exactly the same time something else happened that may or may not be related to his decision to disappear.
     The day before, Gavin MacFadyen, the legendary journalist who'd founded the CIJ (Centre for Investigative Journalism) and the director of Wikileaks, came down with a case of the deads. It was officially ruled as lung cancer and MacFadyen was 76. He was one of the last of the old guard of crusading journalists that includes Sy Hersh and Greg Palast. 
     However, when one is as closely allied with Julian Assange as Gavin was, especially as Hillary Clinton once irritably asked if we could "drone Assange" and considering the body count from this past summer alone, one can never be too hasty in ascribing a cause of death of one who'd even indirectly caused the Clintons so many headaches.
     One would have be a conspiracy theorist extraordinaire or a creative storyteller to tie in Gavin MacFadyen's untimely death with Braverman seeking "urgent and immediate" asylum from the Russian embassy in NYC. But there's more backstory to this that makes the possibility of the ex Clinton Foundation CEO running for his life less speculative and more plausible.
     If you haven't already, I refer you back to the second link I'd posted in the second paragraph. That's to a Politico article written about a year and a half ago when Braverman suddenly turned in his credentials and scuttled from the Foundation like a whipped cur. Braverman, being the former CEO of the Foundation and had overhauled much of its processes, including, at Chelsea's behest, more rigorous controls in its fundraising apparatus, knew where all the bodies were buried (no pun intended). Or, as Tyler Durden sensationally but plausibly said in the pages of Zero Hedge, "Meet The Man Who Can Expose The Real Hillary Clinton Scandal."
     So what is the real scandal that last year pushed him from his corner office at 1271 6th Avenue and nearly out some handy-dandy high-rise window?

"You Don't Know How This Place Works..."

     Braverman's installation as new CEO was already compromised before it had begun. The Foundation had been helmed by the recently-retired Bruce Lindsey, a longtime shyster associated with the Clintons. It was Lindsey who sounded the first warning bells to Slick Willie himself when he got indications this upstart kid was for real. Clinton insiders and hangers-on actually told their CEO, "You don't know how this place works." Apparently, the corruption in Bill and Hillary's mega ATM was so entrenched that many of Braverman's subordinates as well as the Clinton power couple had hamstrung his efforts to reform what he (and his former McKinsey and Company co-worker Chelsea Clinton) saw as a corrupt, inefficient financial juggernaut that now was in possession of over two billion dollars. Here's a telling snippet from the Politico article:

But Chelsea Clinton’s rise at times has seemed to threaten some veteran Clinton aides who had carved out influential—and lucrative—positions after long service with her parents. She is blamed in some quarters for marginalizing both Lindsey and Doug Band, who rose from the president’s body man to build and help run the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative. A third Clinton veteran, Ira Magaziner, saw his portfolio at the foundation diminished during Braverman’s tenure, and sources say Magaziner’s role remains under scrutiny.

     At first, however, it looked as if the whiz kid from New Haven was just the trick. He'd grown the Foundation's endowment from the $20,000,000 it was at to a whopping quarter of a billion dollars. He'd set up programs aimed at reforming transparency and oversight while avoiding conflicts of interest. There apparently was a honeymoon period.

     His installation as CEO in 2013 had actually begun two years earlier in 2011 when the Foundation had unanimously agreed to do a hermetic internal audit. Another one, carried out by Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP, a high-powered, billion dollar white shoe law firm, recommended reforms that would eventually be implemented by Braverman. Enter our untethered goat.

     It began with a subtle enough touch. Yes men would dutifully say "Yes" to him as he advanced his proposals only to sandbag him when he actually tried implementing them. Ira Magaziner found he was actually losing money under Braverman's stewardship despite him already making $20,000 more than the young CEO's $395,000 annual salary. The Old Guard, several of whom being Clinton barnacles going back to when Slick Willie was raping women and dicking bimbos in Little Rock, saw Braverman as a threat not only to their way of life but of the cultish corporate culture that had blossomed around the power couple at the Foundation.

"Follow the money and find the real HRC scandal."

     At first, life seemed to go on rather swimmingly at the Foundation in Braverman's abrupt wake. His spot was taken over by another longtime Clinton crony, Maura Pally, whose old employers at the Bloomberg Philanthropies had kicked in a cool $100,000 to the Foundation. Things were going back to the old corrupt ways of pay-to-play when Hillary was Senator and later Secretary of State.

     Then the Podesta emails began leaking out two weeks ago.

     The hacked communiques from Clinton chair John Podesta's Gmail account had shone a white hot spotlight on the Foundation. Veteran Bill Clinton handler Doug Band, who'd started a consulting firm named Teneo, had apparently landed some lucrative contracts at least partly through his closeness with the Clintons and Hillary's tenure at the State Department. Then, Braverman came in with his reforms long before Wikileaks. This is an email sent from Band to Podesta in which he tries to insinuate the latter to talk sense into Chelsea, whom he calls "a spoiled brat kid... creating issues."

     This panicky letter to Podesta was dated November 11, 2011, two years before Braverman was installed as CEO. His company's involvement with the Clinton Foundation or the CGI, which he risibly tried to deny to Podesta (who must have known better, as he's the ultimate Clinton insider), was inspired by the internal audit by Simpson & Thacher. And if the audit in the pre-Braverman days got him this jittery at the prospect of seeing his company go down in flames with the Foundation, these days he must be shitting enough bricks to build another Faneuil Hall.

     Fast forward nearly three and a half years later. American Progress stooge and Clinton surrogate Neera Tanden writes to Podesta that Band is her pick for the source of the leak to Ron Fournier (resurrected in a tweet by NBC's Joe Scarborough) that had come out about a $12,000,000 bribe given to the Clinton Foundation by the King of Morocco in exchange for hosting one of its shindigs (the exact phrasing was, "Follow the money and find the real HRC scandal."). She tells him to keep a close eye on him and Podesta fires back an email saying just two words:

     ...to which Tanden merely responds, "Holy Moses."

     Mind you, this email exchange was written when Braverman had just suddenly resigned as the CEO of that same Foundation. Then MacFadyen suddenly dies at the same exact time the Wikileaks for which he was still the director begins releasing a river of leaked emails.

     Next thing we know, we hear reports of Eric Braverman banging on the Russian Embassy's door in NYC begging for asylum because he's in fear of his life.

     How did Podesta know he was the leak? We don't know for sure if he was even right but it's not like the usually cautious and conservative Podesta to make even private (at least they were private) allegations to those who were neither attached to the Foundation or the Clinton campaign. But, as I'd said, Podesta is the ultimate Clinton insider.

     What would a braver man do? Expose himself, make himself conspicuous and guaranteeing his abrupt absence would be even more conspicuous. However, in Braverman's case, since he knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak, it's only natural for him to not want to be among them.