Republicans to Clinton Foundation: Policy Change on Donations ‘Too Little, Too Late’

The Clinton family’s nonprofit has been under heavy scrutiny since Hillary began running for president, and the Clintons made an announcement about what the future of the Clinton Foundation holds if she makes it to the White House.

Additional changes revealed yesterday would occur should Hillary Clinton win the presidency: The foundation would no longer accept contributions from any foreign government and former President Bill Clinton would no longer give paid speeches. The MoU also confirmed that the foundation agreed to apply the same rules to all of its other units.

Members of the Clinton Foundation board ratified the changes Thursday.

Republicans said the changes fell short and urged the Clinton Foundation to immediately stop receiving foreign donations. “The CHAI Board will be meeting soon to determine its next steps”. The Boston Globe reported that “since the foundation’s inception, it has collected as much as $25 million from Saudi Arabia, as much as $10 million from Kuwait, and up to $5 million a piece from the Citi Foundation, Barclays Capital, and Exxonmobil”. Corrupt Venezuelan Banker Gonzalo Tirado hired Jonathan Mantz, a Clinton fundraiser, and made a donation to the Clinton Foundation in order to avoid being extradited to Venezuela whileClinton served as Secretary of State.

The former president said the foundation would continue its work but refocus its efforts in a process that will take up to a year to complete. But then the presidential hopeful said they should return donated money to countries known for poor treatment of LGBT individuals, Jewish believers and Christians.

In recent years, the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, has taken on a leadership role at the foundation.

A spokesman for Clinton’s campaign declined to answer questions about the foundation.

Some of the group’s funding has come from foreign donations and political donors to the Clinton family.

TAMUCC political science professor Dr. David Smith feels it will help the public’s lack of trust, “it could help, but a lot of it is going to depend on how quickly that she does that and gets around those issues that she has had in the past with the Clinton Foundation”. However while she was secretary of State, the foundation continued to operate and receive millions of dollars from foreign governments, despite an ethics agreement with the Obama administration.

Former Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican from IN who questioned Hillary Clinton at length about the foundation and potential conflicts of interest IN her 2009 nomination hearing, said this week that he was hopeful that she would make a clean break from the foundation if she’s elected president. Last year, the charities said they did not comply with these promises, blaming “oversights”.

The Clintons’ decision to eliminate foreign could be seen as a move to erase any potential conflict of interest concerns.