When you say "highly illegal", what sort of legal expertise and/or understanding of this do you have? I'm a lawyer, but don't know much about pay-to-play crimes. My understanding is that it's a pretty goddamn hard crime to prove (need extremely strong link between donation and reward), and that most of what is characterized as pay-to-play is actually legal, just the normal unseemly way politics gets done in our country. I'm no fan of Hillary, but I suspect she and her assistants are well aware of the laws, may have stretched things to limit but careful not to step over. In any case, the bald-faced statement that what she did was "highly illegal" strikes me as suspect. (The situation with email server strikes me as similar.)
>>but I suspect she and her assistants are well aware of the laws, may have stretched things to limit but careful not to step over.
What actual evidence is there of this? The clintons receive more than enough money through paid speeches and those would be the route you would use if you wanted to set up a quid pro quo. Using a charitable foundation to do this doesn't make sense generally nor in this case. Of course, lobbying and getting on paid boards after a government career is basically a quid pro quo( the presumption is that after you work for the industry you get a cushy career paid by the industry you helped) but that has been totally ignored this election cycle.
