“What Trump has said is ridiculous”.
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Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told MSNBC on Wednesday that Clinton does not have a conflict of interest with charitable work, and pointed to her rival’s business interests with Wall Street, China and Russian Federation.
No documents have shown Clinton making decisions in favor of donors while secretary of state.
When asked if she was certain that there are no emails or foundation ties to foreign entities that could be revealed and may permanently impact her presidential prospects, Clinton said “I am sure because I have a very strong foundation of understanding of the foundation, not to play on words, that the kind of work the foundation has done … is work that went right into providing services for people”.
Conway pounced on these reports in her Sunday interview.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon did not respond to the AP’s questions about Clinton transition plans regarding ethics, but said in a statement Tuesday the standard set by the Clinton Foundation’s ethics restrictions was “unprecedented, even if it may never satisfy some critics”.
The call from two leading USA news organizations came as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and other members of his party have taken to calling for a special prosecutor to investigate what they say is corruption. Not all requests appear to have been granted, but the coziness between State and the Clinton family charity exposes a troubling hubris and highlights the emptiness of her personal promise to President Obama to build a firewall between the two institutions when she became his secretary of state. She’s been unable to get rid of this e-mail controversy.
Clinton has not held a press conference in 264 days. But the questions about emails and the foundation keep piling up, and she is certain to be challenged at the first debate with Trump on September 26. It then sued the State Department in federal court to obtain the detailed schedules, and the department so far has provided about half of them under court order.
The Associated Press recently reported, “At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its worldwide programs”.
The AP reported that, according to an analysis of her personal calendar and contact information, 85 of the 154 meetings Clinton had with individuals who were not US or foreign government employees were with foundation donors, a rate that calls into question whether donations to the Clinton Foundation were the cost of personal meetings and assistance from a powerful government minister. Clinton said the foundation would no longer hold annual meetings of its worldwide aid program, the Clinton Global Initiative, and it would spin off its foreign-based programs to other charities. “That is absurd”, she said.
“If anything”, Boardman continued, “the AP story could have used far more exploration of the inherent ethical issues here, and of the notion that whether or not Clinton gave extraordinary help to Foundation donors, the potential for accusations of that was probably reason enough to avoid such meetings altogether”. What I’ve learned is that when I try to explain what happened, it can sound like I’m trying to excuse what I did.
Trump gave the Clinton Foundation money and then later said that he got Bill and Hillary Clinton’s attendance at his wedding – his third wedding for those keeping track at home – in return.
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Bill Clinton “will not be involved” in the initiatives that are spinning off or merging with another foundation, Shalala said. The meeting is scheduled for September 19-21, which means it will happen exactly one week before his wife’s first presidential debate in NY.
