It was perhaps apropos that in the midst of the latest embroilment over Hillary Clinton's emails – detailing access to her sought by high-profile donors to The Clinton Foundation – the former secretary of state was methodically scooping up big bucks on a California fundraising swing where she was rubbing elbows behind closed doors with Magic Johnson, Justin Timberlake and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

As Clinton collected presidential campaign funds inside swanky homes tucked into the Hollywood Hills, her campaign team was under siege – combating a familiar charge that has dogged the secretary of state and her husband for years: that a check from a wealthy supporter, however well-meaning, provides an easy line of communication on any other favor under the sun.

Their response: unbending defiance. The reports were "100 percent factually inaccurate." The assumptions being made about nefarious connections were laughable and irresponsible. Clinton called into CNN herself Wednesday night to say "there's a lot of smoke and there's no fire." The Clinton Foundation, meanwhile announced, Chelsea Clinton would remain on its board if her mom wins the White House anyway. When former White House spokesman Bill Burton was asked about the thorny web of Clinton connections on Bloomberg, his reply was a shrug: "It happens."

Holding a steady lead in the polls over Donald Trump, the Clinton campaign dug in on all fronts, giving little ground and essentially attempting to bulldoze their way through the media hailstorm until it snapped back to the latest Trump imbroglio.

Critics might call it arrogance, but for the Clinton camp it's just another week of survival politics.

At the most turbulent moment of her campaign since formally becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Clinton has essentially employed the same rationale as she has for the controversy over her six-figure Goldman Sachs speeches, her private email server and her dearth of press conferences: "I can do it, so I will."

An Associated Press story lit the political brush fire with a calculation that half of Clinton's non-foreign, non-governmental meetings at the State Department were with people who doled out to The Clinton Foundation.

There was no evidence of a quid pro quo, and many of these requests came from exemplary worldwide figures, like the Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winning Muhammad Yunus and philanthropist Melinda Gates.

"These are people who I was proud to meet with, who any secretary of state would've been proud to meet with to hear about their work and their insights," Clinton told CNN in her first public remarks on the issue. Clinton allies stoked outrage by discrediting the AP report for not including her official government meetings in the tally.

But regardless of the statistic, the record is clear that the asks poured in so routinely that the set-up at least raises the pressing question of how a former chief diplomat who is heavily favored to be the next leader of the free world can avoid real or perceived conflicts when dealing with deep-pocketed globetrotters heavily invested in her husband's post-presidency enterprise.

Newly discovered emails show the intertwined relationships made even those closest to Clinton queasy.

Casey Wasserman, an L.A. sports executive who has given the Clinton Foundation between $5 million and $10 million, needed help with a visa for a British soccer player with a criminal record. Doug Band, a longtime aide of former President Bill Clinton who helped start the foundation, emailed Huma Abedin, Clinton's then deputy chief of staff at State for help, according to The Washington Post.

"Makes me nervous to get involved but I'll ask," Abedin wrote back to Band in May 2009.

The visa was never granted.

In another exchange identified by the Post, Democratic donor Joyce Aboussie used urgency to land a meeting for Peabody Energy, one of the world's largest coal producers, and a Clinton Foundation donor.

"Huma, I need your help now to intervene please," Aboussie wrote in June 2009. "We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months. This is, by the way, my first request."

Abedin responded: "We are working on it and I hope we can make something work . . . we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here."

There was the dinner Clinton hosted for a Ukrainian businessman and former member of parliament, another foundation donor. Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally seen as critical to the fight against terrorism in the Middle East, has given between $10 million and $25 million.

The Clinton Foundation has said it will stop accepting corporate and foreign donations if Clinton takes office. But GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas raised a salient point when he said that policy won't erase the flood of money that has already come in the door.

"Announcing that they won't accept them after the election is worse than doing nothing. Because they just declared to dictators and shady oligarchs there's a fire sale before the election," Cotton said.

The deeper examination of the foundation has subsequently given Trump an opportunity, which he has largely seized this week in a series of mostly scripted speeches dubbing Clinton corrupt, unethical and untrustworthy.

"These are people that wanted things for their donations. These are people that expect things for their donations," he told a New Hampshire audience Thursday. "It's Watergate all over again, it's Watergate."

Watergate this is not – and his call for an independent special prosecutor will amount to nothing more than mere red-meat rhetoric – but the episode is wafting the stench of seediness that make voters suspect of Clinton and her motives.

Seventy-two percent of voters told Bloomberg in June it bothered them that the Clinton Foundation solicited money from foreign countries while Clinton was secretary of state. One August survey found that just 11 percent of voters would describe Clinton as honest.

And yet, she's relying on trust and the globally recognized good deeds of the foundation to weather this storm.

"There's no question that the Clinton Foundation's work has saved lives and helped countless people around the globe, but to many, even though these acts aren't necessarily illegal, they look like politics as usual in an election cycle when Americans are tired of politics as usual," said

David Donnelly, president and CEO of Every Voice, a campaign finance watchdog group.

Even Democrats who hold the foundation in high regard think the politics have been lost on this.

Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, called the firewall between the foundation and the State Department "ineffective."

"I wouldn't have done it, it creates a bad perception," he said.

Longtime Democratic consultant James Carville, who guided Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, expressed exasperation but came to the same conclusion.

"I'd say you'd shut it down," he told Bloomberg Television. "The press has decided they don't like it. They have to have their victory."