Lost in the maelstrom surrounding Hillary Clinton’s utterly bizarre decision to violate protocol and use a private email system to conduct public business while serving as secretary of state is another festering Clinton scandal. (Of Clinton scandals, there is no end, to mangle Ecclesiastes.) That’s the fact that the Clinton Foundation, the ostensible charity run by Bill Clinton, accepted donations from foreign countries while Hillary Clinton was the nation’s top diplomat. Several days ago, at an appearance at the University of Miami, the former president waded into the debate and offered an alleged defense of the practice.
“You’ve got to decide, when you do this work, whether it will do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country,” Clinton said, “And I believe we have done a lot more good than harm.”
Two things jump out here. First, there is the implicit admission that the Clinton Foundation has done harm. One hopes a journalist at a future Clinton event will press the former president on exactly what harm his foundation has perpetrated. And second, shouldn’t a charity, of all operations, hold itself to a higher standard than simply doing more harm than good? Primum non nocere seems like a better place to start.
