Bill Clinton shot back at the idea that donors to his family’s foundation received special treatment while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, and said any allegations of such over the past few months are politically motivated.
“Nobody even suggested it or talked about it or thought about it ’til the political season began, and somebody said, ‘Well, what about this?’,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Clinton also said he was never involved in a situation in which he was asked to do anything related to his wife’s position as secretary of state. “No one has ever asked me for anything or any of that,” he said.
When pressed on whether companies who gave to the Clinton Foundation might have sought any special favors, Clinton said he suspects most were trying to be philanthropic.
“I don’t know. You never know what people’s motives are, but in this case, I’m pretty sure everybody that gave to Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake saw what they saw on television, were horrified and wanted to make a difference,” he said. He added that he did not “think Hillary would know either” if someone was motivated to attempt to use her position in the State Department as reason for donating.
“She was pretty busy those years, and I don’t — I never saw her study a list of my contributors,” Clinton added.
He gave one example involving Boeing, which worked with the government to sell planes while simultaneously donating to the Clinton Foundation following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. “I don’t think that they did it to make America, the government, like ’em better,” he said of Boeing’s motives.
The full interview, taped this week in Denver during a Clinton Global Initiative event, is set to air in full Sunday.
