Clinton Cash Film Aims to Cause Likely Democratic Nominee Maximum Damage

When delegates to the Democratic national convention gather in Philadelphia at the end of July to – almost certainly – nominate Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate, they may be in for a bit of a surprise. The night before the opening ceremonies, a film will be premiered in the city that portrays her in a very different light from the official biography.

Clinton Cash is an hour-long cinematic version of the book of the same name that caused quite a stir when it was published a year ago. In lurid images of blood-splattered dollars fluttering down over warlords in conflict zones, accompanied by a menacing soundtrack worthy of a horror classic, the film seeks to distill in punchy form the central message of the book: that Hillary and Bill Clinton, since leaving the White House famously “dead broke” in 2001, have amassed a vast fortune of more than $200m by blurring the lines between public office, their philanthropic foundation, lucrative speaker fees and friendships with dubious characters around the world. Clinton Cash: The Unto... Schweizer, Peter Best Price: $2.30 Buy New $9.99 (as of 03:10 UTC - Details)

As the book’s author, and main narrator of the film, Peter Schweizer, puts it on camera: “The elites of these countries are getting rich, the Clintons are getting rich, and the money is not trickling down to the people.” Along the way, he alleges, the Clintons “have betrayed their own principles”.

It’s a powerful message, one that is clearly designed to stir up trouble at the convention at just the moment when Clinton should be revelling in her victory in the Democratic race. For the Clinton campaign, it will have an air of deja vu as they had to deal with the turbulence caused by the book in May 2015.

On that occasion, they attempted to swat away its attacks by denouncing Schweizer’s work as a “smear project” that amounted to a “concerted effort to bring the Clinton Foundation down”. The Clintonsu2019 War ... Roger Stone, Robert Mo... Best Price: $1.79 Buy New $12.98 (as of 05:05 UTC - Details)

Though Clinton’s people have so far remained silent on the pending launch of the film, there is no shortage of evidence about the partisan backgrounds of the film-makers. Schweizer was a speechwriter for former president George W Bush and coach to Sarah Palin on foreign affairs during her vice-presidential run, while the producer, Stephen Bannon, is a prominent creator of such rightwing favourites as the film Ronald Reagan and His Ranch and chairman of the Clinton-baiting Breitbart News.

At a sneak-peek viewing of Clinton Cash in Manhattan on Wednesday night, to which the Guardian was invited, Bannon and Schweizer unashamedly admitted that their aim was to inject the film’s caustic criticisms of the Clintons into the pending presidential battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Earlier this week Trump referred to the book in a radio interview, suggesting that he was gearing himself up to deploy its controversial material on the campaign trail.

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