On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC 360,” Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued that with the Clinton Foundation, “there’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire.” And that recently announced changes to the Clinton Foundation’s practices that will be implemented if she’s elected are due to “unique circumstances” that didn’t exist during her tenure at the State Department.
Clinton was asked, “Why was it okay for the Clinton Foundation to accept foreign donations when you were secretary of state, but it wouldn’t be okay if you were president?”
She answered, “Well, what we did when I was secretary of state, as I said, went above and beyond anything that was required, anything that any charitable organization has to do. Now, obviously, if I am president, there will be some unique circumstances, and that’s why the foundation has laid out additional, unprecedented –.”
Host Anderson Cooper then followed up, “But didn’t those unique circumstances exist when you were secretary of state?”
Hillary responded, “No, no. You know, look, Anderson, I know there’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire. This AP report, put in it context, this excludes nearly 2,000 meetings I had with world leaders, plus countless other meetings with US government officials when I was secretary of state. It looked at a small portion of my time, and it drew the conclusion, and made the suggestion that my meetings with people like the great Elie Wiesel, or Melinda Gates, or the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus were somehow due to connections with the foundation, instead of their status as highly respected global leaders. That is absurd. These are people I was proud to meet with, who any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with, to hear about their work, and their insights.”
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