MSNBC's Scarborough Invents Algerian Terror Connection To Attack Clinton Foundation

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough suggested that the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed Algeria from a list of state sponsors of terror because the nation donated money to the Clinton Foundation, a baseless charge given that Algeria has never been on the State Department's list of terror sponsors.

On the April 27 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Scarborough used recent media criticism of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation stemming from the right-wing opposition research book Clinton Cash to suggest the likelihood of illegal coordination between donors to her family's charitable foundation and policy decisions she made as secretary of state. Scarborough claimed that when the Algerian government “wanted to be taken off the terror list in the State Department” the government “wr[o]te a check” to the Clinton Foundation:

SCARBOROUGH: I think it was Algeria maybe that had given a donation that went unreported at a time when they wanted to be taken off of the terror list in the State Department. They write the check, they get taken off the terror list. Now can you?-- at the same time, and then it goes unreported by the Clinton Foundation. Is there a quid pro quo there? I don't know, that's really hard to tell. 

[...] 

This is pretty simple stuff. So Algeria is on the terror list, they want off the terror list, the State Department is making a decision to do it, they write a check for what? How much? How many million dollars do they write a check for? I don't know, but Algeria writes a check ... they write a really big check to the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation takes the check, and then just, out of nowhere the State Department then decides, well, they are going to take Algeria off the list. Now why did Algeria write a big check to the Clinton Foundation at the time they want something from the State Department?

But the allegations of a quid pro quo relationship hinted at in Scarborough's questions are baseless, because Algeria was not listed as a state-sponsor of terror at any point during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state -- or at any other point. Currently, the list includes only Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, although Cuba's status is being reviewed. According to NPR, the only nations ever to be removed from this official list are Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and South Yemen.

In fact, Algeria remains a key U.S. ally and partner in the global fight against terrorism in North Africa, according to a State Department report published in 2014, long after Clinton left her post. 

Algeria did make a donation to the Clinton Foundation during Clinton's tenure there, in the form of $500,000 to help with relief in Haiti after an earthquake ravaged the nation. According to a February 25 report in The Washington Post, Algeria was “spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues” around the same time. The Clinton Foundation admitted to improperly failing to disclose this donation.