Cameron Cawthorne at the Washington Free Beacon offered a clear case for the "fact checkers" at PolitiFact and other sites of a Bill Clinton fib on CNBC. He claimed in a Tuesday afternoon interview on Halftime Report that "we make everything public, we disclose everything" in the land of Clinton philanthropy. This turns out to be Trumpian bluster.
BECKY QUICK: This is the twelfth CGI, the twelfth annual meeting here, and this is the last one. Why don’t you talk about why this is the last one?
BILL CLINTON: Well, I think that if Hillary wins the election, it would be impossible to do it because the CGI won’t run–the whole idea of it is it’s a government/business/non-government organization/labor… partnership. You know, citizens. We all work work together
He insisted the conference wouldn’t work without corporate sponsorships and international participation (foreign donors?), and “I learned already in this election that some people were subject to a presumption of guilt just because they were participating,” Clinton said. Then he slammed the political press for being under-informed.
CLINTON: And to be fair a lot of times, the political press – they have no previous exposure to the way we work, and that we’ve done if for years, and we make everything public. We disclose everything, who’s giving, what they are doing, and all that.
The former president is clearly not including in that clueless category all the “mainstream media” stars like Anderson Cooper and George Stephanopoulos who’ve participated in the CGI as moderators and panelists, adding celebrity glamour to the proceedings.
Later, Slick Willie added "The stuff that they've said so far is just bull, but if she was actually the president, it would raise too many questions." He also blustered past Quick as she suggested Chelsea Clinton would still appear to be a direct conduit to the White House if she stayed at the Clinton Foundation.
Cawthorne offered some examples where Bill Clinton was wrong on the facts:
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), for example, did not disclose the names of donors between 2010 and 2013, according to Reuters. While CHAI spun off into a separate but affiliated entity from the foundation in 2010, its spokeswoman said the names of the donors should have been disclosed when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, Reuters reported...
In another example, the Washington Post reported in 2015 that the Clinton Foundation received approximately $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from corporations, universities, and foreign sources.
