The Wall Street Journal is recycling old news to scandalize donations from foreign individuals to the Clinton Foundation by funders who were previously disclosed by the Clintons as early as 2008.
The Clinton Foundation, a global charity, agreed not to accept donations from foreign governments while Clinton was secretary of state, in order to avoid any possible conflict of interest. The Journal baselessly suggested on March 19, however, that the foundation may have been inappropriately sidestepping this ban by still “raising millions of dollars from foreigners with connections to their home governments” from more than a dozen individuals since Clinton became secretary of state in 2009. The article noted that the donations were for “charitable, not political reasons,” but went on to hype “political criticism” over the donations.
A Fox News panel subsequently used the article to baselessly push that there may be a “conflict of interest” with donations to the Clinton Foundation from these individual donors.
But this is yet another attempt to recycle old stories in order to sensationalize charitable donations to an organization with global reach.
The Clintons publically released their donor list in 2008, ahead of Hillary Clinton's confirmation at the State Department which the Journal wrote about at the time. The Journal's 2015 report covers donations to the Clinton Foundation from several of the same foreign individuals referenced in those reports:
· Donations from Victor Dahdaleh were referenced in a December 2008 Journal article.
· Donations from Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi were referenced in a separate December 2008 Journal article.
· Donations from Viktor Pinchuk were referenced in a January 2009 Journal editorial.
Moreover, many of the donors hyped by the Journal have made numerous charitable contributions to a variety of organizations. For example, Wang Wenliang donated to “Singapore, Harvard and New York Universities as well as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank,” as the Journal noted.