In April 2012, representatives from Qatar were apparently hoping to get “five minutes” with former President Bill Clinton while in New York to present him with a $1 million check for his foundation as a birthday gift from the previous year.



While it is unclear whether that meeting ever took place, the offer, mentioned in one of thousands of hacked Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks last week, was an example of the complex ethical issues the Clinton Foundation faced in managing relationships with foreign governments when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. It also raised questions about whether the foundation had fully followed procedures it had voluntarily agreed to in order to avoid those very issues.

The foundation’s ties to foreign governments and financiers have long been fodder for Mrs. Clinton’s critics — chief among them Donald J. Trump — who contend that foreigners used donations to the foundation to curry favor with the Clintons while Mrs. Clinton was the country’s top diplomat.

Emails released this year from Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department showed that foundation donors sought and in some cases obtained meetings with department officials. None showed that Mrs. Clinton made decisions based on contributions to the foundation, and the Clinton campaign has said she never did.