Former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton tour a primary school’s garden in Nairobi previous year as part of a tour of the Clinton Foundation’s projects in Kenya. Richard Painter, a former ethics adviser to President George W. Bush and now a University of Minnesota law school professor, said Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton should remove themselves completely from foundation leadership roles, but he added that potential conflicts would shadow any policy decision affecting past donors.
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Founded by President Bill Clinton, the foundation has become a major player in worldwide health and global philanthropy. It’s also worth remembering this list doesn’t even include officials from the 16 governments – many of them autocrats – who threw the foundation another $170 million. Laureate, which paid Bill Clinton more than $17 million as a consultant between 2010 and 2015, donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
“Those who are wavering right now are just as likely to be thinking about supporting a third-party candidate instead, and not between Clinton and Trump”, said Tom Smith, who directs the Centre for the Study of Politics and Society at the University of Chicago.
A Clinton spokesman, however, said the AP’s report relies on “utterly flawed data” and “cherry-picked a limited subset of Secretary’s Clinton’s schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation”. This is unprecedented and unacceptable. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president. That’s according to a review of department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Donald Trump has also called for the foundation to be shut down.
As if these developments weren’t problematic enough, former secretary of state Colin Powell last weekend denied Clinton’s claim that he advised her to use a private server, as he had done, saying, “Her people are trying to pin it on me”.
The ex-president said in the event of another Clinton presidency, the foundation’s work, funding and his role in it would raise questions that would need to be resolved “in a way that keeps the good work going while eliminating legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest”. Given everything else we know, in all probability her priorities were so influenced, and, in any case, it is obvious that a number of foreign governments believed they could buy favor with the Clintons by contributing to their foundation. It also showed Band making a request on behalf of Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, a top Clinton Foundation donor.
“My emails are so boring”, Clinton said. Clinton also introduced Schwarzman, then chairman of the Kennedy Center, before he spoke. Blackstone officials did not make Schwarzman available for comment. “There are elements of the Clinton Foundation that people often don’t think about that stay forever”.
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Recently, the foundation announced it would ban donations from corporations and foreign countries if Hillary is elected president.
