Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has rubbished allegations and suggestions that his Clinton Foundation was ever involved in 'influence peddling' to finance the various programs it has been espousing and promoting.
In a free-wheeling interview with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour, Clinton, referring indirectly to Peter Schweizer's bombshell of a book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, said there was not an iota of evidence to suggest or believe that the Clinton Foundation was guilty of influence peddling.
When Amanpour asked him about the book suggesting that there may have been quid pro quos or inappropriate influence peddling regarding foreign donations, foreign government donations to The Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton emphatically said, "People, they understand that an enormous percentage of health and development work around the world is funded by governments and multinational organizations, and they fund us, because they think we're good at solving problems and taking care of-taking advantage of opportunities."
"But, we also have 300,000 other donors and 90 percent of them give USD 100 or less. So, there's just no evidence-even the guy that wrote the book, apparently, had to admit under questioning that he didn't have a shred of evidence for this. He just sort of thought he'd throw it out there and see if it would fly," the former president added.
The former U.S. president was also candid in admitting that his foundation had made mistakes on tax filings that conflated private donations and government donations last year, but added that they were accidental in nature and had been since rectified.
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"That was just an accident. People re-file their taxes all the time. We reported all the donations from all the governments and the private sources and, last year, for some reason, nobody really understands, they were put together. The year before, they were filed properly, which shows you there was no deliberate intent. I mean, if there was some-and there would be no benefit to the foundation for doing that," he said.
"We-everybody admits that we're the most transparent of all the presidential foundations and more transparent than a lot of private foundations. And, we just said we were going to have rules to report now every quarter so you can know. And, I think, you know what, I did have one friend of mine who's in the other party say, see what you get for transparency? They try to make you look like a crook, whereas, if you don't tell them anything, which is what I wouldn't do, they'd forget about you and go onto the next target. But I still believe in transparency and I trust the American people and I think it'll be fine," he added.
Clinton also said that after serving two consecutive terms in the White House, he has become a "walking NGO" and was quite happy with his role change from that of being an activist politician to that of being involved actively in the public-related initiatives of his foundation.
Placing it in the context of his wife and 2016 presidential candidate hopeful Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton said, "I was interested in education and well over 90 percent of the kids were in public schools and we couldn't figure out how we could do anything about education except through politics. Hillary, even when I met her, had already been involved in non-governmental activities, from being part of a civic group that monitored elections in Chicago when she was in high school to working in college. And then when we got married, she was involved in several non-governmental organizations 40 years ago."
"So, it's funny; we sort of changed places. You know, I've been-as soon I left the White House, I became a walking NGO and except for the brief period when she was able to come back and work with us these last few years, her life has been in public service. It's been very interesting that our whole-it's like we've changed roles," he added.
