According to Bill Clinton, his foundation has never done anything “knowingly inappropriate” by taking millions in donations from foreign countries.
The former president maintained that he has no regrets that his foundation accepted money from countries like Saudi Arabia, which has a poor human rights record.
The foundation recently announced it would only accept donations from six Western governments going forward, but Clinton reiterated in an exclusive interview with NBC News that it was was “absolutely not” a mistake to accept contributions the way it did in years prior.
“It’s an acknowledgement that we’re going to come as close as we can during her presidential campaign to following the rules we followed when she became secretary of state,” the 42nd president said.
“There has never been anything like the Clinton Global Initiative,” he said, “where you’ve raised over $100 billion worth of stuff that helped 43 million people in 180 countries.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that we have never done anything knowingly inappropriate in terms of taking money to influence any kind of American government policy,” Clinton added. “That just hasn’t happened.”
Clinton said that he is not worried about the criticism, labeling it and the “very concerted effort to bring the foundation down” as “political.”
“The guy that filled out the forms made an error,” he said. “Now that is a bigger problem, according to the press, than the other people running for president willing to take dark money, secret money, secret from beginning to end.”
“People should draw their own conclusions. I’m not in politics,” the former president said. “All I’m saying is the idea that there’s one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else is true.”
