In August 2016, Donald Trump called for a special investigation of the Clinton family’s
charity, known as the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, accusing it of using the
charity to provide political influence in exchange for financial donations.
In fact, this is not the first time that the Clinton Foundation has been accused of similar
impropriety, so we wanted to know, what exactly is the Clinton Foundation and what is the
controversy surrounding it?
Well, the foundation was originally started around 1997 by Bill Clinton in an effort to
raise money to build a presidential library.
Since then, it has come to raise an estimated two billion dollars in total, which is used
to fund philanthropic efforts by the foundation itself.
It is important to note that the charity rarely disburses grants to other people or organizations,
instead preferring to fund its own humanitarian efforts.
And while it may seem suspicious to pay your own staff to accomplish humanitarian goals,
multiple charity watchdogs have cleared the organization of any misappropriation of funds.
Charity Navigator gave the Clinton Foundation four out of four stars, and CharityWatch gave
the group an A for spending the majority of its funds on actual charitable missions.
According to the foundation itself, key humanitarian goals include economic development, climate
change, health and wellness, and increased participation of girls and women.
There is also a group called the Clinton Global Initiative, which is effectively a collection
of super powerful people, like U2 frontman Bono, the COO of Facebook, Bill Gates, and
many others, coming together to propose solutions to global problems.
These solutions often include massive donations.
But the Foundation has been criticized for some of its funding methods.
When rebuilding Haiti following a natural disaster in 2010, the Clinton Foundation used
the relief efforts to help public branding, but many accused the organization of only
providing contracts to those who had made significant donations to the Foundation.
One example saw a construction contract automatically given to a company owned by major donor Warren
Buffet, instead of being selected through a standard UN bidding process.
Ultimately, the construction work turned out to be inadequate for relief efforts, and even
made some Haitians sick.
And the sources of the Clinton Foundation’s donations themselves have long been suspect
by critics and allies alike.
The fact that Bill Clinton is a former President, and that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of
State and may soon become the president herself, means that there is plenty of room for conflicts
of interest.
When Hillary Clinton accepted the position of Secretary of State, the Foundation stopped
accepting donations from foreign governments and conflicting private interests.
However, as soon as her tenure ended, millions poured into the Foundation from countries
like Saudi Arabia, largely from private donors closely tied to the Saudi Royal family.
In fact, according to an investigation by the Associated Press, of the 154 people from
private interests who met with or spoke to Clinton while she was Secretary of State,
85 ended up donating large amounts of money to the Foundation immediately after she left
the position.
In total, those 85 donors contributed more than $150 million dollars.
Additionally, according to the Intercept, donors from Saudi Arabia have donated between
10 million and 25 million dollars, along with another one to five million coming from Qatar,
the United Arab Emirates, and Brunei.
All of these countries have been accused of massive human rights violations, with very
little reaction from the US government.
The intersection of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and potential president, while also
accepting donations from people and governments seeking to influence US policy, clearly raises
suspicions.
Although the Foundation has said that it is incorrect to suggest that donors with political
motives were not ALSO interested in philanthropy, it seems like a weak assurance.
It is unlikely that the Saudi government is interested in promoting female empowerment,
one of the Clinton Foundation’s primary goals.
Still, as with most of the scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton: although on the outside there
is an appearance of impropriety, once a closer look is taken, there is little proof to support
those claims.
As far as any investigations have publicly uncovered, The Clinton Foundation has not
yet been found to have done anything illegal.