Clinton sold access – Trump

‘MORE THAN HALF WHO MET THEN SECRETARY OF STATE DONATED TO FOUNDATION’ ‘They set up a business to profit from public office.’

Donald Trump stepped up his attacks on Hillary Clinton on Tuesday as her campaign battled to silence suggestions that donors to her family’s charity paid for access when she was America’s top diplomat.

The Democratic nominee, looking to make history as America’s first female commander-in-chief, is polling well ahead of her Republican rival but hit choppy waters this week as the Trump campaign has fought to rebound from a series of damaging self-inflicted wounds.

“Hillary Clinton is totally unfit to hold public office,” Trump told a rally in Austin, Texas, interrupted several times by protesters.

“It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins.”

Hours earlier, the Associated Press (AP) reported that more than half the people outside government who met Clinton while she was secretary of state donated money to the Clinton Foundation.

“It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office. They sold access,” he said. “This is corruption and this is why I have called for a special prosecutor to look into this mess.”

The Trump campaign demanded an independent probe after conservative group Judicial Watch, which has targeted Clinton for years, released nearly 15 000 e-mails sent from her private server. Among the e-mails are some purporting to show that donors to the foundation lobbied one of her top aides, Huma Abedin, for access to Clinton.

Asked whether Trump’s donation of tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation was also an attempt to gain access, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN he “wasn’t paying to play”.

“He has never told me he was going to the state department to have a meeting with Hillary Clinton,” she said.

Clinton has so far not commented publicly on the report. But her campaign spokesperson dismissed the AP analysis as based on “utterly flawed data” that “cherry-picked” from her schedule.

“The data does not account for more than half of her tenure as secretary,” Brian Fallon said. “Just taking the subset of meetings arbitrarily selected by the AP, it is outrageous to misrepresent secretary Clinton’s basis for meeting with these individuals.” – AFP

Picture: AFP IN THE BACK SEAT. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Texas yesterday. Hillary Clinton is now leading 47% to his 41.5% according to an average of national polls.