Hundreds of corporate executives, foreign dignitaries and celebrities will pile into a Manhattan ballroom to hobnob with Bill and Chelsea Clinton next month at their charity’s keynote annual event — just days before Hillary Clinton defends herself against pay-to-play accusations from Donald Trump in their first debate.

The 12th and final annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative will showcase its philanthropic work and also the Democratic nominee’s greatest potential vulnerability — her ties to a sprawling global charity that has accepted donations from Middle Eastern governments, foreign businessmen with checkered histories and major corporations with business before the government.


Some Democratic operatives say they’re dismayed by the timing of the three-day conference Sept. 19-21 — a week before the first national debate and seven weeks before Election Day. They say it’s inevitable that having two members of the former and perhaps future first family rubbing shoulders with the well-heeled and well-connected will provide fresh ammunition to the Republican campaign, even as Hillary Clinton is off honing rebuttals to charges that donors got special consideration from the government while she was Secretary of State.

"Some might suggest that the Clinton Global Initiative is simply a glitzy week of highlighting troubling donors," said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. "Others will see it as an annual event highlighting distinctive international issues. In the debate, Trump will see it as ammunition to batter the Democrat."

"The timing is obviously not good," said one Clinton veteran, adding that it was probably unavoidable. “These events get planned months and months and months in advance and canceling it on short notice is not possible."

Trump is likely to intensify his critiques of the foundation after the resignation Friday of his former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, whose murky financial ties to Russia and pro-Russian Ukrainian officials undercut the force of Trump’s argument on the Clintons’ relationships with foreign donors and governments.

While GOP nominee Mitt Romney addressed the conference four years ago, this year, Republicans are using charges of cronyism and favorable access for Clinton Foundation donors as a key line of attack against the Democratic nominee.

Bill Clinton’s announcement Thursday that he and his daughter, Chelsea, would stop raising money for the foundation and turn over operations to independent parties if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency will likely be overshadowed by media attention on this year’s confab.

The foundation has not disclosed this year’s sponsors, and it’s unclear whether the announcement Thursday will serve as a last call — bringing in a flood of cash before the spigot is turned off, or underscore how fraught donations might appear in the middle of a presidential campaign, and give potential contributors a reason to pass.

As of Friday, three heads of state — Argentinian President Mauricio Macri, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic — were listed as speakers.

The price of admission is steep: For a $20,000 annual membership fee, corporations and nonprofits can secure an invitation for their top executive to mingle with the likes of Angelina Jolie, Bill Gates and Queen Rania of Jordan, while brainstorming projects to address problems ranging from poverty and climate change to elephant poaching.

The CGI event, which is timed to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly, has traditionally been a more glamorous version of the proceedings a few blocks away, drawing Nobel laureates, Hollywood celebrities, leading CEOs and heads of state. The meetings have “convened more than 190 sitting and former heads of state” since they started in 2005, according to the foundation’s website.

"To wind down something that is that substantive and that impactful is not easily done,” said Clinton campaign and foundation donor Jay Jacobs. “… Whatever hits, unfair as they may be, may come the way of President Clinton or the candidate Hillary, or the foundation, there are some things that just transcend politics."

The conference has also been linked to less glittery names; it was at the 2009 meeting that the “Clinton Global Citizen” award for “excellence in public service” went to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose economic success in the country has been matched by human rights abuses and accusations of violence against his opponents.

The political spotlight on this year’s meeting may be off-putting to some of the meeting’s usual sponsors.

Barclays will not sponsor the event again this year, according to people familiar with the bank’s plans. Several other past sponsors have not finalized their commitments and at least one is leaning against participating this year.

A handful of the 33 listed sponsors of last year’s conference confirmed to POLITICO that they are signing on again as sponsors, including Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, the Ford Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Current and former sponsors include corporations in heavily regulated industries that stand to benefit from favorable government relations, from banking to pharmaceuticals to energy.

Twenty-nine of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average index companies have been linked to the Clintons’ sprawling charities, Bloomberg reported in 2014. Twenty-five contributed to the foundation, and 27 committed to charitable projects through the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the report. UnitedHealth Group Inc. was the single holdout.

Even a year ago, the swirl of negative headlines — detailing the overlap between contributors to the charity and the Clinton presidential campaign, lapses in donor disclosure and cases where foundation donors received favorable government actions — was already putting off wary donors and invitees, five months after Clinton had announced her candidacy. She stayed away from last year’s proceedings as she is doing this year.

Several high-profile invitees, from Mark Zuckerberg to Pope Francis, declined to attend, POLITICO reported at the time. Obama and prominent members of his administration who’d spoken in the past also steered clear of the event.

Meanwhile, Dow, ExxonMobil, PwC, Samsung, and foreign banks HSBC and Deutsche Bank declined to renew their sponsorships. Still, a few new corporations joined last year, including Gap Inc. and the Middle Eastern construction giant Consolidated Contractors Company.

Annie Karni contributed to this report.

