Every Clintonworld statement contains within itself a fallback position, an excuse to retreat to once the previous lie has been disproven. Clintonworld will deny that Clinton Foundation donors got special favors before claiming that the special favors they get were meaningless. They were mere "courtesies". There was pay for play... but nothing was really playing because it was all a formality.
The president of the Clinton Foundation admitted on Wednesday that there is “no question” that donors to the non-profit are helped out by the powerful former first family through “courtesy appointments.”
“There’s no question there were phone calls made to get appointments for people,” Donna Shalala told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell in an interview.
“There were also business people, there’s no question about that,” Shalala acknowledged. “But I don’t see any evidence that there was policy decisions made as a result of that other than courtesy appointments.”
So the fallback position is that it was all just courtesy. There is, in Hillary's terms, the appearance of smoke, but not actual fire. It looked like something wrong was going on, but really it's just the way that the game is playing. And that has become the typical media excuse for any Obama wrongdoing. Now it's the Clinton excuse all over again.
And, in a typical lawyerism, Shalala emphasizes that there was no proof. Indeed. "You can't prove anything" is the final Clinton defense.