Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Hillary Clinton shut down the charitable foundation founded by her husband, former USA president Bill Clinton, branding it a “corrupt enterprise”.
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“It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins”, he said, adding, “The specific crimes committed to carry out that enterprise are too numerous to cover in this speech”.
Numerous foundation’s programs would become separate non-governmental organizations “without us participating in the governance obviously”, Shalala said. He called it “a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation”.
Founded by President Bill Clinton, the foundation has become a major player in worldwide health and global philanthropy. Luckily, Wolverhampton had a fan in Hollywood sports executive Casey Wasserman, who donated between $5M and $10M to the Clinton Foundation. As has become the norm with Hillary’s State Department activities, nothing here is a “quit the presidential race”-level scandal-but neither does any of it give one a great deal of confidence in her integrity”.
On Monday, watchdog organization Judicial Watch released around 700 pages of State Department communications, many of which focused on how high-level employees at the Clinton Foundation used their special access to the State Department to request specific favors.
Yikes. The AP defines “private interest”-related meetings as involving individuals who weren’t USA federal employees or representatives of a foreign government; by this measure, then, 55 percent of the non-government individuals whose meetings and calls with Clinton were reviewed involved donors to a powerful private organization that the secretary of state co-founded and helps control”.
Another email exchange showed how billionaire investor S. Daniel Abraham, who has donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, received expedited access to the secretary of state in May 2009.
The foundation announced last week that if Hillary Clinton were to be elected, Bill Clinton would step down from the foundation board and it would stop accepting money from foreign and corporate sources.
“The Clintons have spent decades as insiders lining their own pockets and taking care of donors instead of the American people”, said the Republican nominee in a statement on August 22. I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or Friday until she knows how she will feel. But, he said, he hasn’t seen any clear evidence that foundation donors got more than small favors from Hillary Clinton’s State Department. “But you know, it happens all the time”. Huma Abedin initially told Foundation Exec Doug Band that Clinton wasn’t interested in hanging with the Prince, but Clinton appears to have changed her tune after Band reminded her that the Crown Prince was very generous to the Clinton Global Initiative. It also showed Band making a request on behalf of Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, a top Clinton Foundation donor.
So what would remain of the foundation?
Grameen America, the bank’s nonprofit US flagship, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation – a figure that bank spokeswoman Becky Asch said reflects the institution’s annual fees to attend CGI meetings. She also pointed to the presidential library and Clinton center in Little Rock, Ark. “The Clinton Foundation is a charity that helps people around the world”.
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If Clinton wins the election, Bill Clinton will not have any official connection to the foundation, Shalala said, but “I’m sure he’s going to go visit his library”.
