AP: Most of Hillary Clinton’s Meetings Were With Foundation Donors

The majority of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s nongovernmental meetings during her tenure as secretary of state were with donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

The Associated Press made the claim in an exclusive report released Tuesday evening. According to that report by Stephen Braun and Eileen Sullivan, at least 55 percent of officially scheduled meetings and phone calls with Clinton were scheduled with Clinton Foundation donors, “an extraordinary proportion” that indicates “possible ethics challenges” if she is to be elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million …

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 perceptions that giving the foundation 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.

The AP’s findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs.

The 154 did not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives. Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity, but they were not included in AP’s calculations because such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign immediately pounced on the news report. Both Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, issued statements in response, as did campaign surrogate former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history,” Trump said. “We’ve now learned that a majority of the nongovernment people she met with as secretary of state gave money to the corrupt Clinton Foundation. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now—and the foundation must be shut down immediately.

“Crooked Hillary Clinton is the defender of the corrupt and rigged status quo. The Clintons have spent decades as insiders lining their own pockets and taking care of donors instead of the American people. Hillary and Bill’s pay-to-play racket has already gone on far too long, and with unknown cost to the security and safety of our people—and Obama’s Department of Justice has refused to investigate it!”

Pence added that there needs to be an independent counsel assigned to investigate the possible corruption.

“The fact Hillary Clinton’s official schedule was full of meetings with Clinton Foundation donors is further evidence of the pay-to-play politics at her State Department,” he said. “No one is above the law.

“The Clinton Foundation must be immediately shut down and an independent special prosecutor be appointed to determine if access to Hillary Clinton was for sale. It would be a dereliction of duty by President Obama and his Justice Department if they fail to act on these startling new facts right now.”

Giuliani said it is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins. The new report, he added, makes it “abundantly clear” the Clintons used public office to profit personally.

“They sold access and specific actions for money,” he said. “This makes a mockery of her promise to Congress and the President to keep the Clinton Foundation and the State Department entirely separate. In other words, they merged the two into the Clinton Family racketeering enterprise.

“The need for a special prosecutor to investigate these apparent crimes mounts with every passing day and each new revelation of emails and phone logs. I’m sure all we’ve seen is the tip of the iceberg and there will be more to follow.”