Hillary Clinton’s announcement that she’s stepping down from her family foundation’s board of directors while running for president was well received, but that won’t shield her from the roiling controversy over the foundation’s acceptance of tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments.
The boards of the Clinton Foundation and the affiliated Clinton Health Access Initiative are scheduled to meet this week to consider additional actions as a result of her candidacy, possibly including new curbs on foreign donations.
That won’t hush the brouhaha, either, but it could, at least, shut off new attack avenues for rivals seeking to capitalize on her financial entanglements – likely the most extensive web of connections to private and foreign donors of any politician in modern times.
The former secretary of state has faced a barrage of questions and criticism in recent weeks about the foundation’s acceptance of $2 billion in donations since 2001, especially those from Arab nations that engaged in human rights abuses or union-busting tactics.
Until 2013, the foundation was run by Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. But many observers believe that some donors contributed in hopes of winning favor with Hillary Clinton, who led the State Department from 2009 to 2013 and has long been considered the front-runner in the 2016 Democratic presidential race.
Now that she’s formally a candidate, Clinton is likely to become the focus of even more intense scrutiny from the news media, as well as from conservative groups and Republican committees seeking to sully her image.
She resigned from the foundation’s board in an email Sunday, saying she was stepping down “to devote myself to this new, all-encompassing endeavor.”
Her decision “is not unexpected and is an appropriate step to avoid any potential conflicts now that she is a presidential candidate,” said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Maine. However, it will change little with regard to the campaign, he said.
Foundation officials, who lacked authorization to speak for the record, said that directors of both the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative would consider changes to their donor policies, including whether to more frequently identify their contributors and “other changes.”
Foundation officials have said its policy of accepting foreign donations would be reviewed if Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee. Before she became secretary of state, the foundation did agree to restrict foreign donations so that no foreign government could give “materially” more than in prior years, a policy that enabled countries like Qatar and Oman to continue to give.
But Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said that “what’s important is that the relationships with these high-rolling donors are already established, and the money’s already raised.”
As Hillary Clinton attempts to mold her image for her presidential bid, she likely will be confronted again and again about those financial connections, including the foreign donations that put her in awkward positions as secretary of state.
For example, the International Business Times reported last week that Clinton refused to stand up against the government of Colombia after its military rounded up union organizers during a strike against the country’s largest oil company in 2011 and threatened them at gunpoint if they failed to disband. Instead, it said, the State Department publicly praised the South American country’s progress on human rights.
At the same time, Pacific Rubiales, a sprawling Canadian oil company that was involved in the labor impasse, and its founder, Frank Giustra, were pledging millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, the Business Times reported.
No family has tapped so much money from companies, wealthy individuals and foreign countries as the Clintons, putting Hillary Clinton in uncharted waters even if she winds up winning the Democratic nomination.
Besides the foundation donations, Clinton and her husband have already raised billions of dollars in three presidential campaigns. Hillary Clinton has run two expensive New York Senate races. And after he left the White House and she left the State Department in 2001 and 2013 respectively, Bill and Hillary Clinton have together likely reaped as much as $120 million in fees for speaking engagements around the world.
“They have an extraordinary number of relationships developed around fundraising,” dating back more than 20 years, Krumholz said. “I think it’s fair to say that this is a dynastic family like the Bushes that has been courting very powerful interests and wealthy donors for decades and decades.”