Fact-Check: No, the Clinton Foundation Did Not Rank Higher Than the American Red Cross

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine tried to claim that the Clinton Foundation is not a pay-to-play scheme, but “a foundation that does good work,” — so good, in fact, that it “gets higher rankings for its charity than the American Red Cross.”

Fact check: FALSE.

It is not a new claim — and left-leaning Snopes.com had the chance to review it earlier in the year, declaring it a “mixture”: 

WHAT’S TRUE: The charity ranking site CharityWatch grades the Clinton Foundation as an “A” and the Red Cross as an “A-.”

WHAT’S FALSE: The larger and more highly regarded Charity Navigator has refused to evaluate the Clinton Foundation after an early 2015 dispute over bad press and allegations of a lack of transparency; on 1 September 2016, Charity Navigator reinstated the Foundation’s rating.

Snopes.com adds: “How much credence one should afford these rankings is debatable, however. Charity Navigator is the much larger and more highly regarded site.”

In addition, Charity Navigator had put the Clinton Foundation on a “watch list,” partly due to concerns over donations from foreign governments during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. It reinstated the Clinton Foundation, conveniently, in time for the 2016 presidential election.

The integrity of the American Red Cross has never been in question. Not so, the Clinton Foundation.