Donald Trump began his week on Monday by calling for the immediate shutdown of the Clinton Foundation, which he described as “the most corrupt enterprise in political history.”
Trump demands closure of Clinton Foundation https://t.co/eBqCTboOvR pic.twitter.com/a2sUSVVejD
— FRANCE 24 (@FRANCE24) August 22, 2016
Trump, however, is hardly the only one raising concerns about the Clinton Foundation, and the implications for its future operations in the likely event that Hillary Clinton is elected president. Even some of Clinton’s closest allies have been criticizing the foundation and suggesting it should be shut down or seriously altered to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
MORE: Authoritarian Regimes Love The Clinton Foundation
Last week, The Boston Globe, a paper that endorsed Hillary Clinton in January, published an editorial calling on the Clinton Foundation to stop accepting funds.
Winding down the foundation, and transferring its assets to some other established charity, doesn’t have to hurt charitable efforts,” the Globe‘s editors wrote. “If the foundation’s donors are truly motivated by altruism, and not by the lure of access to the Clintons, then surely they can find other ways to support the foundation’s goals.”
That’s a pretty big “if,” by the way, and it’s unclear if the Globe editors are being sarcastic.
Even the Huffington Post seemed to suggest the Clinton Foundation should be disbanded, running a front-page splash with the headline, “JUST SHUT IT DOWN,” and linking to a New York Times story about how the foundation was causing problems for Hillary’s campaign.
Clinton ally and former Democratic National Committee chairman Ed Rendell said last week the foundation should shut down if Hillary is elected in November. “I definitely think if she wins the presidency they have to disband it,” Rendell said. “It’d be impossible to keep the foundation open without at least the appearance of a problem.”
Over the weekend, Senator Ben Cardin (D., Md.) said the Clinton Foundation would “clearly need to change the way they do business” if Hillary becomes president.
The Clinton Foundation has been forced to respond. Former president Bill Clinton announced Monday that if Hillary is elected president,the foundation would stop accepting foreign donations in order to address “legitimate conflict of interest questions.”
That’s not good enough for some.
Bill and Hillary need to shut down the Clinton Foundation yesterday: https://t.co/NroZmllcxL pic.twitter.com/HgisrqVboa
— Slate (@Slate) August 22, 2016
Bill Clinton’s statement also raises another set of interesting questions, such as:
- What about the “legitimate conflict of interest questions” raised about the foundation’s operations while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state?
- What about the conflicts of interest posed by your lucrative public speaking career paid for by foreign entities while Hillary was serving as secretary of state and, potentially, as president?
- What about the foundation’s shady Canadian offshoot, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, run by billionaire mining magnate Frank Giustra, which for convenient legal reasons is not allowed to disclose its donors?
