[andrewl]

While I'm sure that a donation (especially a gigantic one) to the Clinton Foundation will help make the Clintons like you, it's not as though the Saudis gave the money to Hillary herself, or to her campaign. It went to the Clinton Foundation, whose work you can see in the Our Work menu at the top of that page.

[tyingq]

There are ways to be creative about funneling money around. http://nypost.com/2015/04/26/charity-watchdog-clinton-founda...

An excerpt: "The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends."

[whamlastxmas]

Exactly. The money is mostly spent on non-charitable things. For example, HTC needs a private jet to Ohio for a campaign speech. No problem, make a 5 minute speech while in Ohio for the foundation and you can expense it all to the foundation. Or have a huge staff who do fuck all for the foundation and spend 95% of their time on campaign work.

[bruceb]

And you have actual proof of this happening? Clinton foundation staff doing campaign work ?

[whamlastxmas]

It wasn't an accusation, it was an example of how there's zero accountability. However, here is some information:

Katie Dowd: Previously a director at CF, now a director for HRC's campaign

Cheryl Mills: On the board of CF, said by several sources to be working on HRC campaign

Dennis Cheng: Previously served as chief development officer at the Clinton Foundation, is now campaign finance director

BRUCE R LINDSEY: The campaign director for Bill Clinton, now the Chairman of the Board for Clinton Foundation.

And obviously Cheslea, who works both with the CF and HRC's campaign.

The list goes on. Feel free look at a list of officers etc on page 34 here: https://www.clintonfoundation.org/sites/default/files/clinto... and continue doing more searching to see how people working, or have previously worked, at the CF are now doing campaign work for HRC.

This is obviously not proof that someone sitting in the Clinton Foundation office is doing campaign work during their 40 hours/week, but common sense would tell us, even from the very limited data above, that it is very probable to have happened at some point.

Also interesting to note: In 2014, the foundation spent nearly $20 million travel while having only $80 million in salaries. That's a shit load of travel expense. They spent more in travel than they did actually providing direct assistance.

[bruceb]

good detailed response. thanks.

[dragonwriter]

The Clinton Foundation isn't even in theory a grant-issuing direct-aid charity; its mainly a set of "initiatives", each of which is essentially a policy think-tank with a subject matter focus that actively partners with outside (of the Foundation) entities (often primarily governments at some level) to implement policy in its focal area.

[tyingq]

That would show up in "administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses"...the bulk of their expenditures. So it becomes a pretty grey area, fairly easy to funnel money around wherever you want.