Many donors to Clinton Foundation met with her at State
WASHINGTON  (AP) — More than half the people outside the government who met with  Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either  personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation.  It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics  challenges if elected president.
At  least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone  conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department  donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its  international programs, according to a review of State Department  calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85  donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more  than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.
Donors  who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known  economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured  him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who  sought Clinton's help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives  who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with  the firm's corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South  Africa.
The  meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation  donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former  president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in  2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of  access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation  money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars  and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of  contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.
The  AP's findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the  scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton Foundation donors and  people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about  their needs.
The  154 did not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government  representatives. Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign  governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton  charity, but they were not included in AP's calculations because such  meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties.
Clinton's  campaign said the AP analysis was flawed because it did not include in  its calculations meetings with foreign diplomats or U.S. government  officials, and the meetings AP examined covered only the first half of  Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
"It  is outrageous to misrepresent Secretary Clinton's basis for meeting  with these individuals," spokesman Brian Fallon said. He called it "a  distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals  connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation."
Republican  presidential nominee Donald Trump fiercely criticized the links between  the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, saying his general  election opponent had delivered "lie after lie after lie."
"Hillary  Clinton is totally unfit to hold public office," he said at a rally  Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. "It is impossible to figure out where  the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins. It is now  abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from  public office."
Last  week, the Clinton Foundation moved to head off ethics concerns about  future donations by announcing changes planned if Clinton is elected.
On  Monday, Bill Clinton said in a statement that if his wife were to win,  he would step down from the foundation's board and stop all fundraising  for it. The foundation would also accept donations only from U.S.  citizens and what it described as independent philanthropies, while no  longer taking gifts from foreign groups, U.S. companies or corporate  charities. Clinton said the foundation would no longer hold annual  meetings of its international aid program, the Clinton Global  Initiative, and it would spin off its foreign-based programs to other  charities.
Those  planned changes would not affect more than 6,000 donors who have  already provided the Clinton charity with more than $2 billion in  funding since its creation in 2000.
"There's  a lot of potential conflicts and a lot of potential problems," said  Douglas White, an expert on nonprofits who previously directed Columbia  University's graduate fundraising management program. "The point is, she  can't just walk away from these 6,000 donors."
Former  senior White House ethics officials said a Clinton administration would  have to take careful steps to ensure that past foundation donors would  not have the same access as she allowed at the State Department.
more crookedness
https://www.yahoo.com/news/many-donors-clinton-foundation-met-her-state-183315225--election.html
Clinton Foundation--A.P. Report on Clinton Meetings Delayed Three Years by State Department | National Review