Bill Clinton’s announcement Thursday also provided Republicans with a new attack line: If the Clinton Foundation could cause conflict of interest for a Hillary Clinton White House, why didn’t the same standard apply to the Hillary Clinton State Department?
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“Now that they have admitted there is a problem, the Clinton Foundation should immediately cease accepting foreign donations and return every penny ever taken from other countries, several of which have atrocious human rights records and ties to terrorism”, he said in a statement. First, the Clinton Foundation continued to accept foreign donations while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton has stepped down from the foundation board since launching her bid for the presidency.
The foundation’s announcement drew skepticism Friday from the right and the left as critics wondered why the Clintons have never before cut off corporate and overseas money to their charity – and why they would wait until after the election to do so. No matter how hard Bill and Hillary Clinton try to avoid it, those conflicts are simply there and will not disappear with a change of address. The Clintons clearly have no plans of truly shutting down the family foundation should Hillary win the White House.
“As long as either of the Clintons is in public office, or actively seeking it, they should not operate a charity, too”, the board wrote. Donald Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, has accused the Clintons of participating in pay-to-play politics, claiming there was a “direct connection between favors done by State Department officials and major foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation”. They’re going to change the way that the Clintons themselves interact with the foundation.
Also, if there is indeed the potential that donations to the Clinton Foundation might somehow affect government policy, shouldn’t the foundation stop accepting donations now?
But the group has vigorously defended its philanthropic mission, asserting that donations from governments outside the US were from grants awarded prior to Clinton’s appointment as secretary of state. She will face Republican Donald Trump in the November 8 election.
“Whether she or her aides have violated the spirit of the pledge … yeah, of course they have”, McGehee told Politico. “I know it’ll be hard for President (Bill) Clinton because he cares very deeply about what the foundation has done”, Rendell told the New York Daily News. As a means to obscure its list of donors, the foundation has created branches of initiatives, such as the Clinton Global Initiative, and a Canadian affiliate, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership.
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivers opening remarks during a meeting with law enforcement officials at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, August 18, 2016 in New York City.
