Dozens of donors got time with Clinton
High proportion indicates possible ethics challenges if she is elected president
More than half the people outside the US Government who met Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation.
It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.
Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh Government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter genderbased violence in South Africa.
They are among at least 85 of 154 people with private interests who either met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton and also gave to her family’s charities, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to AP.
Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as US$156 million.
The 154 does not include US federal employees or foreign government representatives.
The AP’s findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs.
The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former President Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.
Clinton’s campaign said the AP analysis was flawed because it did not include in its calculations meetings with foreign diplomats or US government officials, and the meetings AP examined covered only the first half of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.
“It is outrageous to misrepresent Secretary Clinton’s basis for meeting with these individuals,” spokesman Brian Fallon said. He called it “a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation”.
State Department officials have said they are not aware of any agency actions influenced by the Clinton Foundation.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that there are no prohibitions against agency contacts with “political campaigns, non-profits or foundations — including the Clinton Foundation”. He added that “meeting requests, recommendations and proposals come to the department through a variety of channels, both formal and informal”.
Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Mike Pence, said the overlaps were “further evidence of the pay-to-play politics at her State Department” and called for a special prosecutor to investigate.
Last week, the Clinton Foundation moved to head off ethics concerns about future donations by announcing changes planned if she is elected. Those planned changes would not affect more than 6000 donors who have already provided the Clinton charity with more than US$2 billion in funding since its creation in 2000.
“There’s a lot of potential conflicts and a lot of potential problems,” said Douglas White of Columbia University. “The point is, she can’t just walk away from these 6000 donors.”
Fallon said the standard set by the Clinton Foundation’s ethics restrictions was “unprecedented, even if it may never satisfy some critics”.— AP