Trump team trashes Bill Clinton’s birthday bash

“The Clinton Foundation’s lack of disclosure surrounding this high-dollar event is deeply troubling and makes a mockery of Bill Clinton’s claim that the foundation is ‘as transparent as we can be,'” Trump senior communications adviser, Jason Miller, said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.

“Given the evidence of corruption at Hillary Clinton’s State Department, the American people deserve to know who is cutting $250,000 and $100,000 checks to the Clinton Foundation — and what they are being promised in return — while she runs for the White House,” the statement said said.

The former first family said it plans to put distance between itself and the foundation if Hillary Clinton wins in November, but not before having one last hoorah between now and the Nov. 8 election, Politico reported Wednesday.

The article reads:

The fundraiser is being held at the Rainbow Room, a fine-dining restaurant on the 65th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. Plans called for performances by Wynton Marsalis, Jon Bon Jovi and Barbra Streisand, according to people briefed on the planning. They said that major donors are being asked to give $250,000 to be listed as a chair for the party, $100,000 to be listed a co-chair and $50,000 to be listed as a vice-chair.

[…]

Not only are major foundation donors gathering at the Rainbow Room on Friday, but on Monday, they’ll convene again five blocks away for the final three-day gathering of the Clinton Global Initiative, which typically concludes with a gala dinner.

Hillary Clinton herself is not expected to attend the Rainbow Room party, a campaign source told Politico.

News that the foundation plans to throw one final bash between now and the general election comes amid reports it may have operated a pay-to-play scheme when Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state.

New questions about Clinton’s tenure at the State Department and her ties to the 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 in November.

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.