In words spoken from the Sultan of Brunei’s lavish Empire Hotel in 2000, President Bill Clinton told reporters that his post-presidency would be about making money: “Now I have a United States senator to support, I understand that’s an expensive proposition.”

Clinton traveled to Brunei with his daughter, Chelsea, for an economic summit that was also attended by leaders such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Jiang Zemin, then China’s president.

The sultan, known in Brunei as His Majesty Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, put on an exhibition of luxury for his summit guests. Four hundred ninety three new cars were purchased to transport the various dignitaries around town.

Perhaps the abundance of wealth had an effect on Clinton, who according to New York Times reporters also in Brunei, “made a strong case for his need to start producing some serious revenue flow.”

Forging a relationship with the Sultan of Brunei would aid him in that goal.

The government of Brunei contributed between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2002, which said that the donation went toward the construction of the Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas.

Clinton would return to Brunei that same year—this time without his daughter.

Clinton was picked up at a Japanese naval base by Jeffrey Epstein and his private Boeing 727—known to many as either “the orgy jet” or “Lolita Express”—and flown to Brunei to visit with Sultan Bolkiah, according to flight records.

Epstein is a registered sex offender who would regularly host Clinton and many others at his private Caribbean island before being put in prison for sexually abusing underage girls around the globe.

He spent five years in prison for the charges, though evidence is reported to have existed that could have led to more serious federal charges such as using his private jet for sex trafficking.

Two of the alleged “madames” linked to Epstein’s case—one of whom reached an immunity deal with prosecutors—were also aboard the flight to Brunei, according to the flight records.

Clinton stayed in the Emperor Suite of the sultan’s Empire Hotel, a $16,600 per night “football-field sized suite that features its own swimming pool and carpets flecked with real gold”

Clinton returned to Brunei in 2005, to thank Sultan Bolkiah for the donation he made to the Clinton library.

“I’m now going to Brunei for a private visit,” wrote Clinton on his personal blog. “I want to thank His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah for his generous donation to the Clinton library.”

He owns a Boeing 747, which he purchased for $400 million and pilots himself. He is also the owner of an Airbus 340, 16 other planes, two helicopters, 9,000 luxury cars, and a palace with 1,788 rooms in it.

Also like Epstein, he has been accused of sexual wrongdoing. In 1997, he was sued by a former Miss USA who said she was held as a sex slave, drugged, and molested by Brunei’s royal family. The lawsuit was dropped after the Sultan and his brother claimed diplomatic immunity.

The sultan and his brother Prince Jefri have become “infamous for their sex parties and their harems composed mainly of underage girls.”

Jillian Lauren, who at 18 years of age was recruited for Jefri’s harem, wrote a book about her experience in which she claimed that “there’s no such thing as underage” in Brunei. Lauren also had sexual relations with the sultan.

The sultan, however, has also pushed the small country toward radical Sharia law over his decades-long reign.

The shift was accelerated on May 1, 2014, when he announced in a royal decree that “the enforcement of Sharia law phase one” has begun and would be “followed by the other phases.”

Crimes such as homosexuality, sodomy, adultery, and the discussion of faith by non-Muslims are now punishable by amputation of limbs, public flogging, or death by stoning.

This shift has made association with the sultan and the nation of Brunei a red flag in the progressive community.

Hollywood stars boycotted the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, owned by the sultan, after Brunei formally adopted strict Islamic law. The City of Beverly Hills government even adopted a formal resolution urging him to divest from the hotel.

The hotel turned into a “ghost town,” as events hosted by the likes of Jeffrey Katzenberg were moved to other venues.

The Beverly Hills Hotel then hired Mark Fabiani, a former Clinton White House aide who handled crisis communications for the administration, to help it deal with the backlash.

The Clinton Foundation has previously stated that the contribution from Brunei was a “one-time donation” and that it does not expect any further donations. A request for comment about whether it has considered returning the money given Brunei’s turn towards repressive Sharia law went unreturned.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton traveled to Brunei in 2012 to “meet with senior officials to emphasize the importance of the increasingly vibrant U.S.-Brunei relationship.” She joined the sultan for dinner at one of his palaces.

Clinton also accepted $58,000 worth of jewelry from Brunei while she was with the State Department.

*** Then that Arkansas Clinton Library has its own Hillary history.

Documents show Hillary Clinton pushed tax breaks for nonprofits while husband solicited library donations

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. –  As first lady in the final year of the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton endorsed a White House plan to give tax breaks to private foundations and wealthy charity donors at the same time the William J. Clinton Foundation was soliciting donations for her husband’s presidential library, recently released Clinton-era documents show.

The blurred lines between the tax reductions proposed by the Clinton administration in 2000 and the Clinton Library’s fundraising were an early foreshadowing of the potential ethics concerns that have flared around the Clintons’ courting of corporate and foreign donors for their family charity before she launched her campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

White House documents in the Clinton Library reviewed by The Associated Press show Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton were kept apprised about a tax reduction package that would have benefited donors, including those to his presidential library, by reducing their tax burden. An interagency task force set up by Bill Clinton’s executive order proposed those breaks along with deductions to middle-class taxpayers who did not itemize their returns. Federal officials estimated the plan would cost the U.S. government $14 billion in lost tax payments over a decade.

In a January 2000 memo to Hillary Clinton from senior aides, plans for a “philanthropy tax initiative roll-out” showed her scrawled approval, “HRC” and “OK.” The document, marked with the archive stamp “HRC handwriting,” indicated her endorsement of the tax package, which included provisions to reduce and simplify an excise tax on private foundations’ investments and allow more deductions for charitable donations of appreciated property. The Clinton White House pushed the tax plan in its final budget in February 2000, but it did not survive the Republican-led Congress.

“Without your leadership, none of these proposals would have been included in the tax package,” three aides wrote to Hillary Clinton in the memo, days before she led a private conference call outlining the plan to private foundation and nonprofit leaders.

Federal law does not prevent fundraising by a presidential library during a president’s term. But in directly pushing the legislation while the Clinton Library was aggressively seeking donations, Hillary and Bill Clinton’s altruistic support for philanthropy overlapped with their interests promoting their White House years and knitting ties with philanthropic leaders. Hundreds of pages of documents contain no evidence that anyone in the Clinton administration warned anyone about potential ethics concerns or sought to minimize the White House’s active role in the legislation.

“The theme here for the Clintons is a characteristic ambiguity of doing good and at the same time doing well by themselves,” said Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota. Jacobs said the Clinton administration could have relied on a federal commission to decide tax plans or publicly supported changes but not specific legislation.

Spokesmen for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Clinton Foundation declined to comment, deferring to the former president’s office.

A spokesman for Bill Clinton’s office said his administration was not trying to incentivize giving to the foundation, but instead was spurred by a 1997 presidential humanities committee that urged tax breaks for charities to aid American cultural institutions. Bruce Reed, Bill Clinton’s chief domestic policy adviser at the time, also responded Thursday that the former president “wanted to give a break to working people for putting a few more dollars in the plate at the church. Not for any other far-fetched reason.” Gene Sperling, former economic adviser to both Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama, added that the tax reduction package was “developed at the Treasury Department, endorsed by experts and designed to encourage all forms of charitable giving.”

The tax changes would have indirectly helped the Clinton Foundation — as well as many other U.S. charities — by freeing nonprofits’ investments and donations that otherwise would have gone into tax payments. A reduction of the excise tax would have boosted the assets of private foundations. Higher deductions for appreciated investments and property would have also aided the Clinton Foundation, which accepts non-cash gifts. In 2010, for example, the charity declared more than $5 million in donated securities on its federal tax returns.

By the time the Clinton administration introduced its tax package in February 2000, the foundation had already raised $6 million in donations, according to tax disclosures.

Months before proposing the tax breaks, Clinton White House officials began courting leaders from some of the nation’s most influential charities in advance of a planned White House conference to celebrate American philanthropy at the turn of the millennium. A September 1999 White House list proposing possible “philanthropy heroes” to highlight at the conference included wealthy donors of “large recent gifts,” among them Microsoft’s Bill Gates and his wife, Dell computer founder Michael Dell and investors George Soros and Eli Broad.

They all later donated to the Clinton Foundation through their companies or private foundations. There are no indications that White House officials discussed future Clinton Foundation gifts with any nonprofit.

Aides told Hillary Clinton in a September 1999 memo that funding for the event would be absorbed by the Treasury Department and several foundations and donors, among them the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Getty Foundation, AOL and Jill Iscol, a close Hillary Clinton friend and donor later named finance co-chair of the first lady’s New York Senate campaign.

Iscol’s IF Hummingbird Foundation later donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The Ford Foundation has donated more than $1 million and the MacArthur Foundation and the Mott Foundation have each donated more than $250,000.

One voice for tax breaks was the actor Paul Newman, who routed the after-tax profits and royalties from his Newman’s Own food products to charity. An October 1999 Treasury memo to Clinton aides recounts a 1998 meeting between Newman and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in which the actor lobbied for “increasing the limits on charitable deductions for corporations and individuals.”