NATION/WORLD
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Clinton donors got face time with her at State
WASHINGTON (AP) —
More than half the people
outside the government who
met with Hillary Clinton
while she was secretary of
state gave money — either
personally or through groups
— to the Clinton Foundation.
It’s an extraordinary propor-
tion 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 execu-
tive 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
charity to counter 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 char-
ities, according to a review of
State Department calendars
released so far to The Asso-
ciated Press. Combined, the
85 donors contributed as
much as $156 million. The
154 does not include U.S.
federal employees or foreign
government representatives.
The AP’s findings repre-
sent the first systematic effort
to calculate the scope of
the intersecting interests of
Clinton foundation donors
and people who met with
Clinton or spoke to her by
phone about their needs.
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File
In this Aug. 16 file photo, Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Philadelphia.
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 percep-
tions that giving the founda-
tion 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 U.S.
government officials, and
the meetings AP examined
covered only the first half of
Clinton’s tenure as secretary
of state.
“It is outrageous to misrep-
resent 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.”
Donald Trump’s vice
presidential candidate, Mike
Pence, said Tuesday the
overlaps identified by AP
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 6,000
donors who have already
provided the Clinton charity
with more than $2 billion in
funding since 2000.
“There’s a lot of poten-
tial conflicts and a lot of
potential problems,” said
Douglas White, an expert
on nonprofits at Columbia
University. “The point is, she
can’t just walk away from
these 6,000 donors.”
Muhammad Yunus, a
Bangladeshi
economist
who won the 2006 Nobel
Peace Prize for pioneering
low-interest “microcredit”
for poor business owners,
met with Clinton three times
and talked with her by phone
during a period when Bangla-
deshi government authorities
investigated his oversight
of a nonprofit bank and
ultimately pressured him to
resign from the bank’s board.
Throughout the process, he
pleaded for help in messages
routed to Clinton, and she
ordered aides to assist him.
Grameen America, the
bank’s nonprofit U.S. flag-
ship, which Yunus chairs,
has given between $100,000
and $250,000 to the foun-
dation — a figure that bank
spokeswoman Becky Asch
said reflects the institution’s
annual fees to attend CGI
meetings. Another Grameen
arm chaired by Yunus,
Grameen Research, has
donated between $25,000
and $50,000.
And in June 2011,
Clinton met with Nancy
Mahon of MAC AIDS, the
charitable arm of MAC
Cosmetics, which is owned
by Estee Lauder. The
meeting occurred before an
announcement about a State
Department partnership with
MAC AIDS to raise money
to finance AIDS education
and prevention.
The MAC AIDS fund
donated between $5 million
and $10 million to the
Clinton Foundation and
several million more through
the Clinton Global Initiative.
East Oregonian
Page 7A
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