Press. voanews.com.
Former president
Bill Clinton says he's proud of people who have donated to the Clinton
Foundation and the work the organization has done, as he waded into a dispute
that Republicans are hoping will damage his wife's presidential campaign.
“We're trying to
do good things,” Bill Clinton said Wednesday. “If there's something wrong with
creating jobs and saving lives, I don't know what it is. The people who gave
the money knew exactly what they were doing. I have nothing to say about it
except that I'm really proud. I'm proud of what they've done.”
He also defended
Hillary Clinton's contact with donors to the foundation while serving as
secretary of state, saying foundation donors like Bangladeshi economist and
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus have no trouble reaching officials
around the world.
An Associated
Press report Tuesday found more than half of the non-government officials who
met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money to the
Clinton Foundation. The report was based on a review of State Department
calendars released so far to AP.
The meetings
between Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee, and foundation donors
don't appear to violate legal agreements both Clintons signed before she joined
the State Department in 2009. State Department officials have said they are
unaware of any agency actions influenced by the foundation.
Yet the
frequency of the overlaps shows the mixing of access and donations. Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump has criticized the links between the
foundation and the State Department, accusing the Clintons of establishing “a
business to profit from public office.”
On Wednesday
evening, Hillary Clinton said the AP had only “looked at a small portion of my
time” as secretary of state and had drawn the conclusion that her meetings with
Nobel laureates - such as Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel - were connected to
the foundation rather than their work as global leaders.
“That is
absurd,” she told CNN. She described the story as “all smoke, no fire.”
Bill Clinton
said changes at the foundation are needed if Hillary Clinton becomes president
that weren't necessary when she led the State Department. The foundation won't
accept foreign donations, and he will stop personally raising money for the
foundation, he said.
“We'll have to
do more than when she was secretary of state, because if you make a mistake,
there's always appeal to the White House if you're secretary of state,” Clinton
said. “If you're president, you can't.”
A statement
Clinton issued on Monday said those changes will go into effect if Hillary
Clinton is elected. Bill Clinton said Wednesday that the foundation has begun
looking for partners to take over some of its work in preparation for that
outcome. That type of transition “takes a reasonable amount of time,” he said.
“You have to do
it in a way that no one loses their job, no one loses their income and no one
loses their life,” he said. “That's all I'm concerned about. We'll do it as
fast as we can.”
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