Clintons led Haiti's post-earthquake rebuild: Supporters call them lifesavers; critics allege dirty deals

The crime crisis in Haiti has prompted past allegations to resurface about the roles former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played in the nation’s recovery after a 2010 earthquake.

"I got a chance to watch a lot of the things that happened on the ground," Jack Brewer, a former NFL player and philanthropist who has pursued initiatives to help rebuild Haiti, told Fox News Digital last week. 

"After the earthquake in 2010, I worked with the NFL Players Association, and we partnered with the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund. … It was called the Clinton Haiti Fund … and we raised a lot of money through that, and it started to be allocated," he explained.

"Then other countries came in and started to allocate a lot of money. You would think that the long-term goal was to rebuild the city of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas that were impacted by the earthquake, but I was there, and a few years went on, and we're still working."

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Brewer said he feels many Haitians "believe that America is one of the roots of the problem," going back to the Clintons and their rebuilding efforts following the earthquake.

When asked about their role in the Haiti recovery, spokespersons for the former president and the secretary told Fox News Digital: "The Clintons worked tirelessly to address the needs of the Haitian people in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake."

"Even as their detractors have distorted and obfuscated the facts, they have never shied away from doing all they could to lift people up. It’s easy to point fingers from afar for political gain, but it impedes progress, and that’s tragic." 

Bill and Hillary Clinton made Haiti their cause célèbre after visiting the island for their honeymoon. The island holds a special place in the couple’s lives. 

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The former president had considered giving up the pursuit of public office altogether before visiting Haiti, but after seeing the culture and people — "the way different cultures try to make sense of life, nature and the virtually universal belief" in the spirit — Clinton decided run for attorney general, which propelled him on the path to president, according to his memoir, "My Life." 

Hillary Clinton continued to be fascinated with Haiti, visiting the island four times during her time with the State Department, equal to the number of times she visited Japan, Afghanistan or Russia, according to Jonathan M. Katz. 

Katz covered Haiti for The Associated Press for 3½ years during and after the 2010 earthquake, which devastated the island. The earthquake killed over 222,500 people, injured at least 300,000 and displaced over 1.3 million of the country’s roughly 9.8 million citizens at the time, according to the national Centers for Environmental Information. 

The earthquake also destroyed over 97,000 homes and damaged over 188,000 others, according to the World Health Organization estimates after the disaster. 

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All of this created a perfect storm of personal and international interest. The Clintons took up the charge on helping rebuild Haiti in the years after the earthquake, with Bill Clinton joining then-Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive as a co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). 

The Clinton Foundation, along with a new foundation established by Bill Clinton and former President George W. Bush, raised around $90 million in support of the cause, with $36 million from the Clinton Foundation and $54 million from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. 

Charities, governments and other groups managed to donate over $13.5 billion to Haiti to aid in its recovery, a significant shot in the arm for a country with a GDP of around $11 billion at the time of the earthquake. 

That the Clintons play such a central role in Haiti’s recovery comes as no surprise, according to Katz, who wrote a review of their involvement in the rebuilding in a Politico piece, "The King and Queen of Haiti," published in 2015. 

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Katz wrote that the Clintons "repeatedly played a key role in Haiti’s politics, helping to pick its national leaders and driving hundreds of millions of dollars in private aid, investment and U.S. taxpayer money toward its development."

"They’ve brought with them a network of friends and global corporations that never would’ve been here otherwise," Katz continued. "Together, this network of power and money has left indelible marks on almost every aspect of the Haitian economy. The island nation, in many ways, represents ground zero for the confusing and often conflict-ridden intersection of her State Department, the Clinton family’s foundation and both of their foreign policies."

The article coincidentally and immediately preceded a deep dive into the Clintons’ financial dealings since Bill Clinton left the White House, Political consultant Peter Schweizer’s "Clinton Cash." The bestseller, published by Broadside Books and researched with help from the conservative think tank Government Accountability Institute, alleged that the State Department "conceived and created a funnel that would direct the aid and relief money that would soon flood into the country." 

"Hillary would control the purse-strings and Bill would have enormous control over where the money was spent. He was ‘Haiti’s money man,’" Schweizer wrote. 

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Despite Bill Clinton’s "romantic" ambitions for the island, five years after the earthquake, the island had seen "billions of dollars … poured into the country, the faucet controlled by Hillary and Bill, and the funds ended up in worthless projects – and in the pockets of the Clintons’ friends and allies."

Schweizer cited federal government audits in stating that "much of the taxpayer money intended for practical rebuilding was squandered." 

ABC News in 2016 would follow up Schweizer’s book with a bombshell report that discussed a series of emails obtained through a Republican National Committee Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that allegedly showed the State Department directing its attention to offers from companies and individuals marked as "FOB" (friends of Bill Clinton) or "WJC VIPs" (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).

Bill Clinton refuted these allegations during an interview with CBS News’ Charlie Rose that year, insisting, "Nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the foundation. Nothing."

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Supporters of the Clintons claim the emails did not show any effort to direct contracts or funds to those companies but merely "identify and assist friends of former President Bill Clinton who were offering help or seeking assistance" in Haiti.

Katz labeled the couple’s efforts in Haiti "decidedly mixed, a murky story filled with big promises and smaller results." But, in a follow-up piece for Slate the following year, he felt the need to clarify some of what he had written in the wake of increasing claims and allegations of misconduct regarding their work in Haiti. 

"I thought it was funny when my name and article ("The King and Queen of Haiti") appeared in the documentary version of "Clinton Cash," given that the article in question debunked some of Peter Schweizer's most sensational claims," Katz told Fox News Digital. "I remain a staunch critic of U.S. policy in Haiti, and stand by the many criticisms I’ve made about both Hillary and Bill Clinton in both their official and personal roles over the years." 

"But as I've also written, it’s a willful error to hide legitimate criticism of over one hundred years of U.S. interventions in Haiti -- from the brutal occupation of 1915-1934 to the mass deportations and political interference happening today -- behind a fable about one American power couple," Katz explained. 

 "Every U.S. president, Democrat or Republican, including both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, played their own direct and destructive roles in bringing about the current crisis," he added. "The sooner we come to terms with that, the better it will be for everyone involved."

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Kim Ives, editor of Haiti Liberte newspaper, told the BBC in 2016 that "a lot of Haitians are not big fans of the Clintons," and that they "did a pretty poor job" during the recovery efforts following the earthquake, leaving many with a "dim view" of the couple. 

The Washington Post reported that one such example of a project that seemed to slip through the cracks included a $2 million housing expo for thousands of new housing units, as well as a $170 million power plant and port for the Caracol Industrial Park. 

The Haitian parliament in 2011 did not renew the recovery commission’s mandate, with only half of the $10 billion amassed in the first year for rebuilding dispersed by the time the commission folded. 

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report concluded that the commission's decisions were "not necessarily aligned with Haitian priorities," but it fell short of declaring any wrongdoing on the commission’s part. 

The bulk of the money went to U.N. agencies, international aid groups, private contractors and donor countries’ own civilian and military agencies, according to the BBC. Brewer separately noted the need to pay such groups as the Red Cross, who had already been on the ground running their recovery efforts by the time the commission started distributing funds but lamented that further funds ended up in the "wrong" hands. 

"The actual funds left on the ground, a lot of them got into the hands of the wrong people or the folks in power," Brewer told Fox News Digital, 

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"It’s been very disappointing to see the level of corruption, particularly around things that involve children and youth, and trying to get medical supplies in and out of the country … it has been very difficult," Brewer added. 

A spokesperson for former President Bush provided "no comment" in response to a Fox News Digital request for comment regarding the Haiti recovery efforts.