>>Your last point here is the fundamental issue of why federal corruption laws and "conflict of interest" terms exist.

There's a disconnect like the Grand Canyon here.

I think we agree that Bahrain is a US ally in the Middle East. However, the US had a 4-year ban on arms sales to Bahrain because of Human Rights abuses. The accusation presumably is that there was a donation to the foundation and presto, the ban is dropped.

Is that your gist?

If so, then my understanding is that the State Department told Congress that the sales were not for "crowd control" and excluded teargas, stun grenades and Humvees. The approved sales were for ammo, tank parts, radios, helicopters, and missiles. Not small arms or anything you can use to repress the population.

Had Clinton not approved, Bahrain is more than capable of sourcing ammo, tanks, helicopters and missile systems elsewhere. So if the purpose of the ban is to apply pressure to improve behavior, then you need to titrate your carrot/stick because you lose all leverage if they pick a new supplier (and then give you the finger.)

Seems to me the State Department has a heck of a difficult job balancing all these considerations to achieve the best result for the US. Yeah, I "get" that it's a bad look that he donated a big chunk of ca$h to the Clinton Foundation- but I'd be more inclined to check out whether/how much the defense contractors donated. They're the ones who stood to lose a petrodollar customer and while $31M probably isn't much to a petrodollar prince, he could have gotten his arms elsewhere and spent his $31M on a new fleet of Bentleys if you're saying that's the equation.