Hillary Clinton’s campaign seized on a Newsweek report Wednesday alleging the Trump Organization’s foreign business ties would create serious conflicts of interest for the GOP nominee should he win the White House, and launched into a lengthy Twitter tirade demanding the Republican candidate respond to the story.
“In light of [Kurt Eichenwald’s] report on the Trump Organization’s dangerous ties, here are 20 questions that Trump needs to answer—now,” Clinton’s Twitter feed stated.
First, her Twitter feed continued, addressing the GOP nominee, “Will you sever ties with your company linked to foreign leaders, questionable organizations, and criminals if you become president?”
Second, Clinton’s feed asked, “How will you handle non-cancelable contractual obligations with parties whose interests conflict with those of the United States?”
And the candidate’s Twitter timeline continued in that vein for some time, as she posed an additional 18 questions to the Republican presidential candidate.
[View the story “Clinton seizes on Newsweek article” on Storify]
Her questions come amid reports that there may have been a pay-to-play scheme in place at the Clinton Foundation when she served as secretary of state.
New questions about Clinton’s tenure at the State Department and her ties family’s foundation cropped up last month after the Associated Press published a report Tuesday showing that half of the non-government individuals who met with her when she was secretary were foundation donors.
Of the 154 non-government officials who met or had phone calls scheduled with Clinton when she worked the top spot at the State Department, approximately 85 either donated directly to the foundation or “pledged commitments to its international programs,” AP reported, citing State Department calendars.
Those 85 donors contributed a combined $156 million to Clinton-controlled entities.
“At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million,” the AP noted. “Some of Clinton’s most influential visitors donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and to her and her husband’s political coffers.”
Bill Clinton announced in August that the foundation would stop accepting donations from foreign and corporate entities should the Democratic nominee win in the fall.
He also said he’d step down from the group’s board of director’s if the Democratic Party is victorious this fall.
However, even with the pledge to halt foreign and corporate donations to the foundation, much of the Clintons’ network of charitable foundations would be exempt from this policy, including the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which raised 60 percent of its revenues in 2015 from foreign government grants, and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which profited after Clinton’s State Department approved a deal that played to the group’s stake in uranium mining, the Boston Globe reported.
Further, as far as Bill Clinton’s pledge is concerned, it 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,” the AP noted.
Bill and Chelsea Clinton will both step down from the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s board of directors should Hillary Clinton win the White House in November, the group announced Wednesday.
