Former President Bill Clinton falsely claimed Tuesday afternoon that the Clinton Foundation discloses all information related to its donors and activities.
CNBC anchor Becky Quick interviewed Clinton at the 12th and final Clinton Global Initiative gathering and asked him why there would be no future meetings.
"Well, I think that if Hillary [Clinton] 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. We all work work together," Clinton said.
Clinton added that the economics would not work for the organization unless they had corporate sponsorships or people from all around the world participating in the organization. The former president then laughed off the scrutiny that his foundation has faced from Republicans and the media regarding its donors.
"I learned already in this election that some people were subject to the presumption of guilt just because they were participating," Clinton said.
Critics have levied pay-to-play accusations against the foundation, charging that donors were given special access to the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and the two entities had overlapping interests.
Clinton then threw the "political press" under the bus, saying they did not have previous exposure to how the foundation worked.
"We disclose everything, who’s giving, what they are doing, and all that," Clinton said.
Despite Clinton’s claim that the foundation discloses everything, reports have shown the family charity not disclosing donors’ names in a timely manner. 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.
CHAI should have published the names during 2010-2013, when Clinton was in office, CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley acknowledged this week. "Not doing so was an oversight which we made up for this year," she told Reuters in an email when asked why it had not published any donor lists until a few weeks ago.
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.
The disclosure came as the foundation faced questions over whether it fully complied with a 2008 ethics agreement to reveal its donors and whether any of its funding sources present conflicts of interest for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins her presidential campaign.
The money was paid as fees for speeches by Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton. Foundation officials said the funds were tallied internally as "revenue" rather than donations, which is why they had not been included in the public listings of its contributors published as part of the 2008 agreement.