What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in
1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for …
well, everything. With projects ranging from public
health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child
development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent
offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of
State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
When? 1997-present
Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.
How
serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s
strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its
weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes
come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from
outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much
good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that
in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose.
The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to
correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation
come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest:
How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches?
How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s
work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? Did
the foundation steer money improperly to for-profit
companies owned by friends? The second, connected question is about disclosure.
When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make
certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming
questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it
harder to answer those questions. Source
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