In her August 24 interview on CNN, Clinton said the AP report excluded almost 2,000 meetings and looked at a small portion of her time as secretary of state. However, it was disclosed at a court hearing on August 22 that the FBI had turned over about 14,900 emails to the State Department that it had uncovered during the course of its investigation.
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But Republicans said the matter was serious enough that Mrs. Clinton needs to break her streak and hold a press conference for the first time this year. Trump, who donated to the Clinton Foundation, has repeatedly charged that his opponent, while secretary of State, provided access to foundation contributors in exchange for donations to the charity. She said her family’s foundation is seeking “partners” to take over some programs, as former President Bill Clinton recently announced in anticipation of the November election.
Hillary Clinton joined the foundation board after stepping down as secretary of state in early 2013, but she left the board previous year before starting her campaign.
That office, boasting a letter of support from Clinton, called Clinton Foundation donors and asked for money.
It turns out that if you wanted a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it was a hell of a lot easier if you dropped a few florins into the Clinton Foundation pot.
In any event, she never used the personal servers for emails including information deemed secret by the government, Clinton said.
Third, nobody can deny that the Clinton Foundation has done a world of good, especially in the field of health care – providing direct help, according to the foundation’s website, to some 430 million people in 180 countries. The 85 donors collectively contributed as much as $156 million, the AP reported.
This is the week that the steady drip, drip, drip of details about Hillary Clinton’s server turned into a waterfall.
These failures included $2.35 million in undisclosed donations that flowed to the Clinton Foundation from a family foundation linked to a company that had a takeover deal that required approval by USA government agencies including the State Department. It is based on partial records released by the State Department so far and does not reflect the full scope of people with whom Clinton met as secretary of state.
GOP pundits, meanwhile, say the story is yet another strike against Clinton, whose campaign has had to ward off a number of scandals through the election cycle. He wrote in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that the AP report and others raised questions over whether State officials acted to benefit the Clinton Foundation “in violation of executive branch ethics guidelines”.
Perhaps even more damaging however, was the release, the same day, of hundreds of e-mails written to and by Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide; some show that donors to the Clinton Foundation had uncomfortably good access to the State Department during Mrs Clinton’s time there.
Late Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton said that he’s proud of people who have donated to the Clinton Foundation and the work the organization has done. Jeff Sessions, have accused Clinton of extorting worldwide relationships to get money for her family’s foundation. “Madam secretary, if a Republican candidate was running against you and served as secretary of state, and had a foundation that took donations from foreign entities, wouldn’t you be criticizing her for a conflict of interest?”. He suggests Chelsea Clinton’s resignation from the foundation board.
The foundation has said would also accept donations only from U.S. citizens and what it described as independent philanthropies, while no longer taking gifts from foreign groups, USA companies or corporate charities.
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Yet the frequency of the overlaps shows the mixing of access and donations.
