Clinton Foundation Would Weigh Down a Hillary Presidency

"The Clintons have been targeted by trumped-up scandals from Whitewater to Benghazi. There also are self-inflicted wounds: President Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton's use of private e-mail servers while secretary of state.

They may be on the verge of creating another one: The Clinton Foundation, which has done extraordinary good works over the past 15 years, would present an inherent conflict of interest should she become president, and may be problematic for her even now as a candidate.

Clinton has suggested that if she is elected, the foundation -- which collects contributions from wealthy interests including foreign governments -- would continue basically as is. "The work that it's done has been extraordinary," she said in March when asked whether there would be any ethical concerns about continuing the foundation. "The answer is transparency."

Ethics experts reject that. They say there wouldn't be any way to avoid the appearance of conflicts if she wins the presidency.


"If Bill seeks to raise large sums of money from donors who also have an interest in U.S. policy, the public will rightly question whether the grants affected United States foreign policy," says Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University School of Law. Ethics rules, he notes, are "not merely to prevent bad behavior but to foster public trust in the integrity of government choices." He's open, however, to the idea of the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea, running the foundation."


https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-22/clinton-foundation-would-weigh-down-a-hillary-presidency

The foundation hasn't been vetted yet.