Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are tightening their grips on the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations. The AP investigation said that 85 of 154 meetings or phone calls Clinton held with private citizens were with donors to the family charity. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday night that there are no prohibitions against agency contacts with “political campaigns, nonprofits or foundations – including the Clinton Foundation”. “It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office”. “They sold access and specific actions by and really for I guess the making of large amounts of money”.
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Victor Pinchuk, who has given up to $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, appeared on the guest list that was sent between Dennis Cheng, an executive at the foundation, and Huma Abedin, then Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department, ahead of a June 2012 dinner.
However, in the case of Irish American Maureen White, a committed fundraiser and supporter of the Clintons’, a request for a meeting with Hillary via the foundation during a visit to Washington was granted.
It was revealed yesterday that more than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money to the Clinton Foundation, The Associated Press reported.
The State Department disputed that the emails are evidence of impropriety.
Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence has also called for the foundation to be “immediately shut down”. But these promises do nothing to relieve Hillary Clinton of obligations or pressures from the other 6,000 individuals who have given the Clintons more than $2 billion in charitable donations.
“We are going to follow the laws of this country”, he added.
Clinton’s press secretary Brian Fallon responded vigorously to the claims, saying in a statement that “the data does not account for more than half of her tenure as secretary”.
Clinton’s campaign said the AP analysis was flawed because it did not include in its calculations meetings with foreign diplomats or USA government officials, and the meetings AP examined covered only the first half of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Trump stuck to script on Tuesday night, reading his speech from a teleprompter and focusing on Clinton in a continued attempt at a more disciplined campaign, which began last week at the same time former campaign chairman Paul Manafort resigned.
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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.
