By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--November 19, 2008
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Media reports Monday evening suggested that pending a vetting of her husband’s business affairs, Hillary Clinton has been offered America’s top diplomatic post by President-elect Barack Obama and that she is poised to accept. If the reports are true, Obama must not be worried that former President Bill Clinton’s freewheeling fundraising practices will come back to haunt the incoming administration. The ethical concern is not that the former commander-in-chief is raising oodles of money to fight poverty, global warming, HIV/AIDS, and sugary soft drinks in elementary schools. More power to him. The problem is that with Secretary of State Hillary off in the tension-filled Levant conjuring loaves, donors may give money to the William J. Clinton Foundation wanting something more than a discount at the Clinton Library gift shop. They may expect favors from a Clinton State Department or from others in the Obama administration. Even if everything happening at the foundation is completely above board, there is the potential for the perception of corruption, as Deborah Corey and I noted in the February 2008 Foundation Watch. This is because federal law does not require nonprofit charities — including presidential foundations — to disclose the identities of their contributors. Bill Clinton fiercely defended his legal right to keep donor names secret earlier this year and will probably do so again. [...]
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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