Foreign Donors
While Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Australia, Norway, Algeria, and the Dominican Republic all lavished millions of dollars on the Clinton Foundation. While acting coy when questioned about most of these, the Clinton Foundation has admitted it should have sought approval from the State Department before accepting $500,000 from the government of Algeria. Whoops.
For the entirety of the Clinton Foundation’s existence, foreign donors made up one-third of all donors giving more than $1 million and made up more than half of donors who gave $5 million or more (Washington Post, February 18, 2015).
In fact, Bill Clinton even saw the foreign donations from shady countries as a positive. “I think it is a good thing—for example, the U.A.E. gave us money,” the former president said of the United Arab Emirates. “Do we agree with everything they do? No. But they are helping us fight ISIS, and they built a great university with NYU, open to people around the world. And they have helped us support the work that this foundation does. … Do I agree with all the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia? No.” (New York Times, March 20, 2015).
In late March, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sent a letter to Jarrett, now a White House Senior Adviser. Among the questions in the letter were (1) “At what point did the Administration become aware that the MOU and the process of vetting Clinton Foundation donors were flawed?” (2) “What did the White House do, if anything, to mitigate issues with the Clinton Foundation’s donors?” (3) “Was the White House aware that the MOU was insufficient while Clinton was serving as Secretary of State? If so, were any addendums added to supplement the MOU?” (4) “Was there any independent audit or verification that the Clinton Foundation was abiding by the MOU’s Donor Disclosure provisions?” (5) “Were foreign governments that contributed to the Clinton Foundation given special treatment or consideration by the White House?” (6) “If the White House had been aware of the violations, would the Clinton Foundation or Secretary Clinton have been reprimanded in some fashion for their actions?”