According to a blockbuster new report by Christine Brim, Clinton crony Thomas Pickering profited to the tune of half a million dollars while arranging shady deals with Russia, Syria, and Iran.

Some of these deals were outright illegal, the report says:

[Hillary Clinton’s] Foreign Affairs Policy Advisor Thomas Pickering was a paid director for the Russian company Trubnaya Metallurgicheskaya Kompaniya (TMK) from June 30, 2009 to June 26, 2012. TMK is majority-owned by Russian billionaire oligarch Dmitry Pumpyansky, a close Putin ally.

I discovered extensive proof of TMK’s business dealings in Iran and Syria while Pickering was on its board, including TMK sales of oil and gas pipelines to Iran that were specifically prohibited under U.S. laws and executive orders.

Emphasis added.

The Brim report notes that this Clinton crony had a similar relationship with Boeing during the Iran negotiations, one that resulted in a $25 billion contract between Boeing and Iran.  When the stakes are that high, corporations are willing to work with tyrants and human rights abusers like the mullahs.  Pickering served as a lobbyist encouraging ratification of the Iran deal while on Boeing’s payroll — a fact he kept secret from those he was lobbying, according to news reports.

We have learned about Pickering’s dealings thanks in part to emails recovered from Hillary Clinton’s illegal secret server.  These emails show him engaged in pay for play negotiations between the Clintons and foreign governments, according to the Brim report.

Emails released from Clinton’s private server show that Pickering was emailing, meeting, and coordinating foreign travel with Clinton and her staff from the beginning of her time as secretary of State and arguing for an end to economic sanctions on Iran all during the same years he was on TMK’s board of directors. Starting in December 2011, he also served in official capacity on Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Clinton appointed Pickering chairman for the Benghazi Accountability Review Board three months after he left TMK.

Unsurprisingly, in that role he found that Hillary Clinton was in no way blameworthy for the disaster at Benghazi.  Indeed, in a parallel role he ensured that she received a “Pursuit of Peace” trophy from the International Crisis Group in 2014, the day before the House Select Committee on Benghazi launched its work.

These stories are of course deeply familiar to anyone who has followed the tales of the Clinton State Department.  It’s not a very different story from the story about her taking big money donations from Bahrain to her foundation, and then approving a major arms deal sought by that country.  Official State Department channels had rejected the deal previously, but just like the laws forbidding sales of pipeline technology to Iran, neither the law nor the ordinary standards of diplomatic practice matter for Clinton “friends” who are willing to come across with plenty of cash.

Nor is it very different from the story about how Clinton rubber-stamped a vastly increased number of visas from Saudi Arabia following tens of millions of dollars in donations to her family foundation.  She did this in spite of having herself sent a cable in 2009 stating that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida.”

So this story is one we know all too well.  Is this kind of shameless corruption the future of the American government?  The next few weeks will tell.