NYT editorial board: Clintons should stop taking foreign, corporate donations now
The New York Times editorial board says that it’s an “ethical imperative” for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton to stop accepting foreign and corporate donations to the Clinton Foundation now rather than waiting until after November’s election.
“A wiser course would be to ban contributions from foreign and corporate entities now. If Mrs. Clinton wins, Bill and Chelsea Clinton should both end their operational involvement in the foundation and its affiliates for the duration of her presidency, relinquishing any control over spending, hiring and board appointments,” its members wrote in an editorial published Tuesday.
Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement calling the editorial a rebuke of her “poor judgment.”
“The fact that even the liberal New York Times thinks the Clinton Foundation presents an unacceptable conflict of interest is a devastating rebuke of Hillary Clinton’s poor judgment and broken ethical compass,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller wrote. “At a minimum, Hillary Clinton should heed the growing calls for her corrupt foundation to cease accepting foreign and corporate contributions immediately. With each donation she becomes more and more compromised.”
The board says that the latest batch of emails and an Associated Press report about Clinton meeting with Clinton Foundation donors as secretary of state gives Donald Trump ammunition to argue “it was hard to tell where the foundation ended and the State Department began.” The Clinton campaign argues that the AP report misrepresented the situation, particularly because it excluded her meetings with foreign officials.
If Clinton wins the presidency, the board says that if the Clintons don’t distance themselves completely from the foundation while in the White House, “it could prove [to be] a target for her political adversaries.”
“Achieving true distance from the foundation is not only necessary to ensure its effectiveness, it is an ethical imperative for Mrs. Clinton,” it said.
The former president recently announced that the foundation would no longer accept foreign and corporate donations if his wife is elected president and that he would resign from the board.