[But while the move could avoid the awkwardness of Mr. Clinton jetting around the world asking for money while his wife is president, it did not resolve a more pressing question: how her administration would handle longtime donors seeking help from the United States, or whose interests might conflict with the country’s own.]
By Amy Chozick and Steve Eder
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Mrs. Clinton, at a news
conference in 2015, joined the foundation
when she left the state department and
stepped down in 2015 before
beginning her campaign. Credit Andrew
Burton/Getty Images
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The kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated more than
$10 million. Through a foundation, so did the son-in-law of a former Ukrainian
president whose government was widely criticized for corruption and the murder
of journalists. A Lebanese-Nigerian developer with vast business interests
contributed as much as $5 million.
For years the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea
Clinton Foundation thrived largely on the generosity of foreign donors and
individuals who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the global charity. But
now, as Mrs. Clinton seeks the White House, the funding of the sprawling
philanthropy has become an Achilles’ heel for her campaign and, if she is
victorious, potentially her administration as well.
With Mrs. Clinton facing accusations of
favoritism toward Clinton Foundation donors during her time as secretary of state,
former President Bill Clinton told foundation employees on Thursday that the
organization would no longer accept foreign or corporate donations should Mrs.
Clinton win in November.
But while the move could avoid the
awkwardness of Mr. Clinton jetting around the world asking for money while his
wife is president, it did not resolve a more pressing question: how her
administration would handle longtime donors seeking help from the United
States, or whose interests might conflict with the country’s own.
The Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of
millions of dollars from countries that the State Department — before, during
and after Mrs. Clinton’s time as secretary — criticized for their records on
sex discrimination and other human-rights issues. The countries include Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei and Algeria.
Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous
benefactor. The kingdom gave between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton
Foundation. (Donations are typically reported in broad ranges, not specific
amounts.) At least $1 million more was donated by Friends of Saudi Arabia,
which was co-founded by a Saudi prince.
Saudi Arabia also presents Washington with a
complex diplomatic relationship full of strain. The kingdom is viewed as a
bulwark to deter Iranian adventurism across the region and has been a partner
in the fight against terrorism across the Persian Gulf and wider Middle East.
At the same time, though, American officials
have long worried about Saudi Arabia’s suspected role in promoting a hard-line
strain of Islam, which has some adherents who have been linked to violence.
Saudi officials deny any links to terrorism groups, but critics point to Saudi
charities that fund organizations suspected of ties to militant cells.
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton
campaign, said the Clintons and the foundation had always been careful about
donors. “The policies that governed the foundation’s activities during Hillary
Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state already went far beyond legal
requirements,” he said in a statement, “and yet the foundation submitted to
even more rigorous standards when Clinton declared her candidacy for president,
and is pledging to go even further if she wins.”
Mrs. Clinton’s opponent, Donald J. Trump,
could face his own complications if he becomes president, with investments
abroad and hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate debt — financial
positions that could be affected by moves he makes in the White House. And on
Friday, Paul Manafort resigned as chairman of the Trump campaign, in part
because of reports about his lucrative consulting work on behalf of pro-Russian
Ukrainian politicians.
Still, Mr. Trump has seized on emails
released over the past several weeks from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of
state, in which a handful of donors are mentioned. He has attacked her over an
email chain that showed Douglas J. Band, an adviser to Mr. Clinton, seeking to
arrange a meeting between a senior American government official and Gilbert
Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian real estate developer who donated between $1
million and $5 million. Mr. Chagoury explained through a spokesman that he had
simply wanted to provide insights on elections in Lebanon.
Some emails and other records described
donors seeking and in some cases obtaining meetings with State Department
officials. None showed Mrs. Clinton making decisions in favor of any
contributors, but her allies fear that additional emails might come out and
provide more fodder for Mr. Trump.
Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the
foundation, said the decision to forgo corporate and foreign money had nothing
to do with the emails. The foundation will continue to raise money from
American individuals and charities.
“The only factor is that we remove the perception
problems, if she wins the presidency,” he said, “and make sure that programs
can continue in some form for people who are being helped.”
But Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial
Watch, a conservative group that has sued to obtain records from Mrs. Clinton’s
time at the State Department, said that “the damage is done.”
“The conflicts of interest are cast in stone,
and it is something that the Clinton administration is going to have to grapple
with,” Mr. Fitton said. “It will cast a shadow over their policies.”
And in an election year in which a majority
of Americans say they do not trust Mrs. Clinton, even some allies questioned
why the foundation had not reined in foreign donations sooner, or ended them
immediately.
A Bloomberg poll in June showed that 72
percent of voters said it bothered them either a lot or a little that the
Clinton Foundation took money from foreign countries while Mrs. Clinton was
secretary of state. In a CNN/ORC International Poll the same month, 38 percent
of voters said Mr. Clinton should completely step down from the foundation,
while 60 percent said he should be able to continue working with the foundation
if his wife became president. Mr. Clinton said Thursday he would leave the
foundation’s board if Mrs. Clinton won.
Edward G. Rendell, a former Democratic
governor of Pennsylvania, said the foundation should be disbanded if Mrs.
Clinton wins, and he added that it would make sense for the charity to stop
taking foreign donations immediately.
“I think they’ll do the right thing,” Mr.
Rendell said, “and the right thing here is, without question, that the first
gentleman have nothing to do with raising money for the foundation.”
Mr. Minassian said ending foreign fund-raising
before other sources of money could be found, and without knowing who will win
the election, could needlessly gut programs that help provide, for instance,
H.I.V. medication to children in Africa.
Begun in 1997, the foundation has raised roughly
$2 billion and is overseen by a board that includes Mr. Clinton and the
couple’s daughter, Chelsea. Mrs. Clinton joined when she left the State
Department and stepped down in 2015 before beginning her campaign. Its work
covers 180 countries, helping fund more than 3,500 projects.
Having a former president at the helm proved
particularly productive, with foreign leaders and business people opening their
doors — and their wallets — to the preternaturally sociable Mr. Clinton.
Among the charity’s accomplishments: Its
Clinton Health Access Initiative — which is run by Ira C. Magaziner, who was a
White House aide involved in Mrs. Clinton’s failed effort to overhaul the
health care system in her husband’s first term — renegotiated the cost of
H.I.V. drugs to make them accessible to 11.5 million people. The foundation
helped bring healthier meals to more than 31,000 schools in the United States,
and it has helped 105,000 farmers in East Africa increase their yields,
according to the foundation’s tally.
In December 2008, shortly before Mrs. Clinton
became secretary of state, Mr. Clinton released a list of more than 200,000
donors to defuse speculation about conflicts.
Soon after, Mrs. Clinton agreed to keep
foundation matters separate from official business, including a pledge to “not
participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a
direct and predictable effect upon” the foundation without a waiver. The Obama
White House had particularly disliked the gatherings of world leaders,
academics and business people, called the Clinton Global Initiative, that the
foundation was holding overseas. The foundation limited the conferences to
domestic locations while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. On Thursday, Mr.
Clinton said the gathering in September in New York would be the foundation’s
last.
One of the attendees at these conferences
speaks to the stickiness of some donor relationships.
Victor Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose
father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has
directed between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation. He has lent his
private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr.
Clinton’s star-studded 65th birthday celebration.
Between September 2011 and November 2012,
Douglas E. Schoen, a former political consultant for Mr. Clinton, arranged
about a dozen meetings with State Department officials on behalf of or with Mr.
Pinchuk to discuss the continuing political crisis in Ukraine, according to
reports Mr. Schoen filed as a registered lobbyist.
“I had breakfast with Pinchuk. He will see
you at the Brookings lunch,” Melanne Verveer, a Ukrainian-American then working
for the State Department, wrote in a June 2012 email to Mrs. Clinton.
A previously undisclosed email obtained by
Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group, through public records
lawsuits shows the name of Mr. Pinchuk, described as one of Ukraine’s “most
successful businessmen,” among those on an eight-page list of influential
people invited to a dinner party at the Clintons’ home.
Earlier in 2012, Ambassador John F. Tefft
wrote to Mrs. Clinton about a visit to Ukraine by Chelsea Clinton and her
husband, Marc Mezvinsky, “at the invitation of oligarch, Victor Pinchuk.” Mrs.
Clinton replied, “As you know, hearing nice things about your children is as
good as it gets.”
In July 2013, the Commerce Department began
investigating complaints that Ukraine — and by extension Mr. Pinchuk’s company,
Interpipe — and eight other countries had illegally dumped a type of steel tube
on the American market at artificially low prices.
A representative for Mr. Pinchuk said the
investigation had nothing to do with the State Department, had started after
Mrs. Clinton’s tenure and been suspended in July 2014. He added that at least
100 other people had attended the dinner party at Mrs. Clinton’s house and that
she and Mr. Pinchuk had spoken briefly about democracy in Ukraine.
A deal involving the sale of American uranium
holdings to a Russian state-owned enterprise was another example of the foundation
intersecting with Mrs. Clinton’s official role in the Obama administration. Her
State Department was among the agencies that signed off on the deal, which
involved major Clinton charitable backers from Canada.
There was no evidence that Mrs. Clinton had
exerted influence over the deal, but the timing of the transaction and the
donations raised questions about whether the donors had received favorable
handling.
Even if Mr. Clinton steps down, there could
be remaining complications about a potential president’s name being affixed to
an international foundation. And Chelsea Clinton, who is its vice chairwoman,
would continue her leadership role.
“It is very difficult to see how the
organization called the Clinton Foundation can continue to exist during a
Clinton presidency without that posing all sorts of consequences,” said John
Wonderlich, the interim executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a
government watchdog group in Washington. “What they announced only addresses
the most egregious potential conflicts.”
Considering the scale and scope of the
foundation, Mr. Wonderlich said it was easy to “name a hundred different types
of conflicts.”
The reality is, he added, “there are no
recusals when you are president.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
