Clinton Foundation–State Department controversy

This article is part of a series about Hillary Clinton
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During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, a number of individuals, organizations, and countries allegedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation either prior to, or while, pursuing interests through ordinary channels with the U.S. State Department.^[1][2]

Judicial Watch, a plaintiff in ongoing lawsuits pertaining to Clinton, alleged that email communications, obtained via FOIA requests, between officials at the Clinton Foundation and top aides of Secretary of State Clinton show improper ties between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.^[3][4][5] Clinton has denied these allegations.^[6] A Clinton spokesperson and others have dismissed the controversy as election-year politics.

Background

Foundation

The Clinton Foundation, founded in 1997 by former US President Bill Clinton ^[7] is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that describes its mission as to "strengthen the capacity of people in the United States and throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence."^[8] The charity watchdog group Charity Navigator, which has an ongoing relationship with the Foundation, gave it its highest possible rating, four out of four stars, after its customary review of the Foundation's financial records and tax statements.^[9] According to PoliticsUSA the Foundation is "highly regarded" and "it is doing critical work that benefits millions of people all across the globe".^[10]

Confirmation hearings

In January 2009, when then Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a nominee for Secretary of State for the Obama administration, Senator Richard Lugar (the senior Republican on the committee) said that the Foundation was “a unique complication that would have to be managed with great care and transparency.” Lugar said that the foundation could create the impression that foreign donors were giving money to gain access at the State Department: "The core of the problem is that foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favor with the Secretary of State".^[11]

Prior to her confirmation as Secretary of State, Clinton approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Foundation and the administration in which the Foundation agreed to refrain from accepting new donations from foreign governments during her tenure. The memorandum was intended to ensure that foreign governments would not view contributions to the Foundation as a means to curry favor with the US State Department.^[11] The agreement permitted donations from governments who had contributed to the Foundation in the past, but prohibited contributions from governments that had not previously donated unless they were approved by the State Department's ethics office.^[2][12][13] The MOU promised that the foundation would publish all contributors' names, and would seek prior approval from the State Department ethics office for new foreign donors.^[11]

Operation of Foundation

Access to Clinton

A top donor to the foundation named Raj Fernando was placed on the International Security Advisory Board within the State Department. A piece in the Atlantic, referring to an ABC News story, described Fernando as being "significantly less qualified" than other members of that Board. The request for his appointment came from Secretary Clinton's office, and Fernando resigned shortly after ABC News made inquiries about it.^[14]

Dennis Cheng had served as the chief development officer of the Clinton Foundation from 2011 to 2015, when he became the national finance director of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.^[15]

Donations by foreign entities

In February 2015, the Washington Post reported that during Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation accepted several million dollars in donations from seven foreign governments, including a donation from one government—that of Algeria—in violation of Clinton’s agreement with the administration. In 2010, the Foundation had accepted $500,000 from Algeria. The Foundation indicated that the donation was to contribute to humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti. The Post noted that the donation "coincided with a spike" in lobbying efforts by Algeria of the State Department regarding their human rights record.^[2][16]

Uranium One

From 2009 to 2013, the Russian atomic energy agency (Rosatom) acquired Uranium One, a Canadian company with global uranium mining stakes including 20% of the uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset with national security implications, the acquisition was analyzed by a committee of nine government agencies, including the State Department, which was then headed by Clinton.^[17][1][18] The voting members of the committee can object to such a foreign transaction, but the final decision then rests with the president.^[19]

In April 2015, the New York Times reported that, during the acquisition, the family foundation of Uranium One's chairman made $2.35 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation. The donations were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite a prior agreement to do so. In addition, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin and which was promoting Uranium One stock paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech in Moscow shortly after the acquisition was announced.^[1][18] According to Factcheck.org, there is "no evidence" that the donations influenced Clinton's official actions or that she was involved in the State Department's decision to approve the deal.^[19]

Switzerland's largest bank

When Clinton took office as Secretary of State, the Internal Revenue Service was suing Switzerland's largest bank, UBS AG, to obtain information on Americans with secret accounts at the bank. The bank's situation was complicated by the fact that, by acceding to the IRS's requests, the bank would potentially violate Switzerland's secrecy laws. Following what the Wall Street Journal referred to as "an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat", Clinton announced a tentative settlement between UBS and the IRS. Based on the terms of the settlement, UBS provided information on the identities of 4,450 Americans with accounts at the bank out of a total of 52,000 requested by the IRS. The agreement was criticized by some lawmakers in the U.S. who had been seeking additional information.^[20][21]

Following the settlement in 2009, UBS's donations to the Clinton Foundation increased significantly. Through 2008, the bank had donated $60,000 cumulatively to the Foundation. By 2014, the total had grown to $600,000. The bank also paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for a series of question-and-answer sessions with its CEO, which was the top source of corporate speech income for Clinton between 2001 and 2014.^[20][21]

Emails between Clinton Foundation and State Department

A number of emails released by Judicial Watch in August 2016 from Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State included dialogue between Doug Band, an official at the Clinton Foundation and personal aide to Bill Clinton, and top aides of Hillary Clinton. In one exchange in April 2009, Band lobbied for a job at the State Department on behalf of someone else saying it was "important to take care of (redacted)." Clinton's aide, Huma Abedin, responded "Personnel has been sending him options".^[3][4]

In June 2009, Band emailed Abedin requesting a meeting with Clinton for Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain. Band referred to the Prince as “a good friend of ours”. In 2005, the Prince had committed to contribute $32 million to scholarships through the Clinton Global Initiative. Abedin responded, offering the Prince a meeting.^[20][22]

In December 2010, Band and Abedin exchanged emails regarding efforts to obtain invitations to an official lunch with Chinese President Hu Jintao for Clinton Foundation donors. The potential guests who were discussed included Bob McCann, then-president of wealth management at UBS, Judith Rodin, Rockefeller Foundation president, and Hikmet Ersek, Western Union CEO. Band requested that Rodin be seated at the same table as Vice President Joe Biden.^[23][24]

According to CNN, the emails "raise questions about the Clinton Foundation's influence on the State Department and its relations during her tenure". The Clinton campaign has denied that the State Department took any actions based on contributions to the Clinton Foundation.^[20][3][4]

Controversy

The Clinton Foundation has been praised as a force for good, and condemned as a "slush fund".^[25] The fact-checking organization Politifact says it is mostly true that the Clintons take from the foundation no salary, no other money, and no personal benefit.^[26] Supporters of the Clintons say that the controversy obscures valuable work done by the foundation.^[27] Opponents say that the foundation made it possible for donors to gain access to Secretary Clinton, and influence her official actions.^[25]

Associated Press story

In 2016, the Associated Press published a controversial story based on logs of meetings Clinton took as Secretary of State. In the story, the AP stated that at least 85 of 154 people from private interests that Clinton met or had phone conversations with while Secretary of State donated to the Clinton Foundation. In total, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million to the Foundation. The AP described the number as an "extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president". The AP promoted its story with a tweet claiming that "more than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation", which has been criticized because it does not make clear that the analysis was performed on meetings with people who were not federal employees or foreign government representatives among other reasons.^[28]

By excluding Clinton’s meetings with government officials from the U.S. and other countries, the majority of her diplomatic work, the AP's count included only a small subcategory of fewer than 5% of the people Clinton met with as secretary of state.^[28] The AP, explaining the omission, said that "such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties".^[29] Further, among the private donors with whom Clinton met were internationally known individuals such as Melinda Gates, Elie Wiesel, and economist of Muhammad Yunus.^[28]

Reporters from other news outlets immediately noticed, and commented on, the AP's selective use of information and misleading tweet.^[30][31] The report was called a "big failure" in an opinion piece by Paul Reyes of CNN, because it presented "facts out of context and somehow built a whole report around Clinton having done nothing wrong".^[32] A piece in the Washington Monthly stated that AP "took some interesting information they gathered and spun it into something it wasn’t…scandalous."^[33] Others described the story as botched or "seriously flawed".^[34] Matthew Yglesias wrote that the AP story's conclusions "turned out not to be true".^[35] A Clinton spokesman said about the story, “It cherry-picked a limited subset of Secretary Clinton's schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation.”^[20] Despite criticism from other journalists, and calls from Clinton and others for the AP to retract its tweet, the AP defended its story,^[34]" although its Executive Editor did admit that its tweet had been "sloppy".^[36]

Transparency and foreign donations

Despite the MOU between the Clinton Foundation and the Obama Administration, the foundation's Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) failed to report donors from 2009 to 2013, though later sought to rectify that omission.^[11] A CHAI spokeswoman blamed this omission on oversight.^[37]

According to PolitiFact, the Clinton Foundation was allowed to accept millions of dollars from Australia, Dominican Republic, Kuwait, Norway, Qatar and Oman because of the clause in the MOU which allows previous donors to continue to fund the foundation's programs.^[38] Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin opined that the Qatari donation raised ethical questions because Qatar is "a prominent backer of Hamas."^[39] Without notifying the State Department, the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from Algeria, which donated for the first time in 2010, and from the United Kingdom, which tripled its support of the foundation's health programs between 2009 and 2012. Foundation officials blamed the case of Algeria on a lack of oversight and argued that the UK donation did not constitute "material increase" in support for the foundation.^[40]

Charity Watch, a nonprofit charity watchdog organization, has given the Clinton Foundation an "A rating" overall, higher than the American Red Cross, and the "highest rated" grade for "Transparency and Governance".^[41][42] The charity watchdog group Charity Navigator gave the Clinton Foundation its highest possible rating, four out of four stars, after revewing its financial records and tax statements.^[43]

Reaction to controversy in 2016

Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, during his unsuccessful presidential campaign, criticized Clinton for a conflict of interest: "Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships? Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do".^[44] Republican Senator John Cornyn, who voted for Clinton's confirmation in 2009, says that she duped Congress, that he now regrets his vote, and that President Obama should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether donors to the foundation gained improper access at the State Department.^[11]

PoliticsUSA has described the controversy around the foundation as an attempt by Republicans to help them defeat Hillary Clinton in her 2016 presidential bid, and stated that the attacks were based on fabrications.^[10]

An August 30, 2016 editorial by the New York Times stated that there is no proof that donors to the foundation received special favors from Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.^[45] But, the Times says, there is reason to question where the Clinton Foundation ended and where the State Department began.^[45]

FBI investigations

In October 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that four field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Little Rock, Ark. -- had been collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to determine whether "there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling." According to the WSJ article, FBI officials presented their findings to the Justice Department in February 2016, but "the meeting didn't go well". Justice Department officials felt the cases were weak and saw little reason to continue the investigations.^[46] However, the New York FBI field office continued to pursue the matter, leading to reports that some New York agents were feuding with the Justice Department and basing their investigation in part on media accounts^[47] and in particular on the book Clinton Cash, written by Peter Schweizer, a senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News.^[48]

In a reported separate investigation, the Washington field office was investigating Terry McAuliffe before he became a board member of the Clinton Foundation.^[46]

References