The U.S. State Department may have engaged in favoritism for a Clinton Foundation donor just days after Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state, Fox News reports.
Fox News correspondent James Rosen reported that Bill Clinton traveled to Lagos, Nigeria 20 days after his wife left the State Department to tour a planned city, Eko Atlantic, with billionaire developer Gilbert Chagoury. Eko Atlantic is being built on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean off the Nigerian coast, and hopes to become an international financial hub. Less than a month after Bill Clinton's trip, State Department official William P. Franklin ordered a letter be written to Ronald Chagoury, Gilbert’s brother and business partner, stating that the State Department was officially interested in obtaining land for a consulate in Eko Atlantic.
Gilbert Chagoury, Rosen reported, is also a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation. Chagoury was also discovered in emails between State Department officials and Clinton Foundation officials, who attempted to set up a meeting for him with U.S. government officials.
Fox News reported that connections between the Clintons and Chagourys extends back to the 1990s.
The State Department claims that began looking at property around Lagos, Nigeria years earlier, in the middle of Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
"The impression left is that there's favoritism involved and it's just very unusual in State Department real estate and housing transactions overseas to have this kind of focus on someone with such clear financial connections to even the departed secretary of state," said John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.