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Ethics watchdog:
Clinton’s State Department door always open to big donors
By M.D. Kittle / January 12, 2016 / News
/ No Comments
A watchdog
group is asking the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “apparent breach of ethics
rules” for granting top donors special access to the State Department.
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 “There’s a growing and disturbing narrative surrounding Clinton in the way in
which she conducted business at the State Department,” said Matthew G. Whitaker,
director of the nonpartisan Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT)
said in a statement. “Essentially, if someone wanted access to her, they needed
to be a significant donor to her political campaigns or to her philanthropic
endeavors, the kind of treatment that ordinary Americans would not have.”
OPEN DOOR POLICY: An ethics watchdog is asking for an investigation into
presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s open-door
policy to campaign and foundation donors.
The complaint comes a little more than a month after an Associated Press
investigation found Clinton opened her office to dozens of influential
Democratic Party fundraisers, including liberal billionaire kingmaker George
Soros.
Clinton, the leading presidential candidate for the Democrats, also warmly
welcomed loyalists from her husband President Bill Clinton’s administration and
campaigns, as well as corporate donors to the family’s global charity, according
to State Department calendars obtained by the AP.
She met or spoke by phone with nearly 100 influential donors and corporate
executives during her four years at the State Department, records show.
Clinton’s emails show that in one case Soros was “impressed” with the level of
access he was given, bragging that he could always get a meeting with or a call
into the secretary to discuss policy issues.
Many of the meetings, according the the AP, involved heads of companies and
organizations that “pursued business or private interests with the Obama
administration, including with the State Department while Clinton was in
charge.”
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 “The AP found no evidence of legal or ethical conflicts in
Clinton’s meetings in its examination of 1,294 pages from the
calendars,” according to a Nov. 30 report. “Her sit-downs with
business leaders were not unique among recent secretaries of State,
who sometimes summoned corporate executives to aid in international
affairs.”
But her recent predecessors did not seek the presidential
nomination of their party. Clinton ran in 2008, and while serving at
State was widely expected to run in 2016.
Clinton’s campaign did not return Watchdog.org’s request for
comment.
The former secretary of State’s special meetings included a sit-down
with Bill and Melinda Gates, whose family foundation has donated
more than $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the
New York Times.
Some of the donors dropping millions of dollars into the Clinton
Foundation also wrote hefty checks to the 2016 Clinton’s campaign.
Last month, Washington, D.C.-based FACT called for a federal probe
into communications during Clinton’s time at the State Department.
The communications suggest Clinton gave special treatment to a
private mining company as a result of the company’s relationships
with Clinton’s son-in-law and donors to the Clinton Foundation.
In its statement, FACT notes that ethics laws require all citizens
to be treated equally by government officials, “and that the ethics
rules prohibit government officials from giving preferential
treatment to anyone for any reason.” The rules also require
government officials not have conflicts of interest that do or are
perceived to affect their actions.
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