Bill Clinton downplays talk of improper donations
Former President Clinton has defended donations to his Clinton Foundation during his wife’s tenure as secretary of State, downplaying suggestions of any conflict of interest.
“No one has ever asked me for anything, or any of that,” Clinton said in an excerpt of an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that aired Thursday.
“You never know what people’s motives are,” Clinton said on whether any donations were made to the foundation to curry favor with his wife’s State Department.
{mosads}”I don’t think Hillary would know either. She was pretty busy those years,” he said. “I never saw her study a list of my contributors. I had no idea who was doing business before the State Department.”
Scrutiny over donations to the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, from 2009 to 2013, has swirled amid her nascent 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.
The former commander in chief said his wife believed part of her job as secretary was to “advance America’s economic interests around the world.”
“I never thought about whether there was any overlap,” he told CNN, referring to the donations.
In one instance, Clinton defended contributions from Boeing to his foundation following Haiti’s earthquake in 2010, which came while the airline manufacturer lobbied his wife’s State Department.
Hillary Clinton pushed for Russia to buy Boeing airplanes early in her term att State. Two months after the $3.7 billion deal was awarded in 2010, the company announced a $900,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation for relief in Haiti, according to The Washington Post.
“America’s always having to lobby for American-made airplanes,” Bill Clinton told CNN.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of that wasn’t going on when Boeing announced they wanted to invest some money in Haiti to help them recover from their adversity,” Clinton said. “But I don’t think that they did it to make America, the government, like them better.”
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