Perhaps not the the most effective messaging in the history of politics, but this is the corner in which Team Hillary finds itself, in the wake of two major bombshells that detonated this morning:

Shorter Clinton Campaign: “All of this smoke is not caused by a fire.” https://t.co/E6gUyAuuuj pic.twitter.com/U4Zv5fWO7Q

— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) April 23, 2015

The New York Times (building on reporting in the forthcoming book ‘Clinton Cash’) revealed the sordid web of cash and coziness wherein the Clintons and their foundation found themselves much richer, and the Russian government found itself in possession of a very large percentage of American uranium capacity. Reuters blew the whistle on Clinton organizations’  — shall we say — incomplete tax filings dating back years, which failed to report tens of millions in overseas cash, including from foreign governments.  These “mistakes”, evidently unnoticed by the Clintons’ bookkeepers and the savvy professionals at the IRS, are prompting Clintonworld to re-file at least five years’ worth of returns:

“Oh, did we say ‘zero’? We meant ‘tens of millions.’ Thanks for checking our math, Reuters!” http://t.co/VtD4qtQ0fk — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 23, 2015

The Clinton campaign’s response to these scandals, aside from the standard “old news” / attack the messenger playbook, is to tout their own transparency (!), and loudly point out that there isn’t smoking gun proof that can directly connect the millions flowing into Clinton Inc’s coffers to State Department favors orchestrated by Hillary Clinton. Let’s set aside all of the financial bread crumbs and obvious interests at play in the Times story, and layer in several additional pieces of compelling circumstantial evidence. Exhibit A, from that same Times article:

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock. At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

Deliberate opacity and broken rules. Exhibit B, raised by Allahpundit earlier (toggle ahead to the 5:20 mark):

The Clinton camp flat-out denied that a key meeting held at the couple’s private home had ever occurred…until they were confronted by photo evidence from a New York Times reporter, at which point they were forced to admit that the nonexistent meeting actually did happen after all. This is called “lying.” And Exhibit C is the ever-present fact that Hillary Clinton flouted every rule in the book by setting up a secret, private email server in her basement, on which she conducted all official business at State. When people started sniffing around, Hillary’s lawyers examined the emails without any oversight (later shifting their story about how they culled “personal” missives from public documents), and deleted more than 30,000 of them. Before wiping the server clean, of course. It is not unreasonable to infer that perhaps some of the concrete evidence of quid pro quo corruption Clinton loyalists are demanding doesn’t exist anymore because Clinton loyalists actively destroyed said evidence. Between the smell test, the facts laid out by several news outlets, the lack of required disclosures of foreign donations, the very shady tax “errors,” the Chappaqua meeting lie, and Hillary’s eradicated paper trail, the Clintons have not earned the benefit of the doubt on any of this. Quite the opposite. I’ll leave you with the Clinton machine desperately slinging mud until enough time has passed to allow them to declare all of this “old news” again:

Clinton campaign says NYT reporter “attacked” the Clintons for mentioning Clinton Foundation officials lied to her. pic.twitter.com/DlFL560stL

— Elliott Schwartz (@elliosch) April 23, 2015

Ah yes, the infamous Fox News/New York Times alliance is conspiring to victimize the clean-as-the-wind-driven-snow Clintons. Sure. Also, hmmmm:

A plugged-in Democrat just told me he’s getting the same sinking feeling he had when John Kerry was the nominee http://t.co/eC8blYdbl9

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) April 23, 2015