In a freshly Wikileaked exchange, Hillary Clinton's communications director Jennifer Palmieri admits that some Clinton Foundation donors probably did expect some favors for their money.

Writing to aides, including John Podesta, whose emails were hacked, Palmieri discourages having Clinton answer too many questions about foundation donations because '[t]here aren't great answers and in many cases not her place to answer them.'

'I think it does make sense for her to publicly state that she never did anything at state to help a donor,' Palmieri said. 'At least this way she will have taken off the table any notion that there was a quid pro quo even if some donors may have had bad intentions,' the top aide argued.

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Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri (left) suggested that Hillary Clinton (right) not answer too many questions about the Clinton Foundation and suggested some donors probably 'had bad intentions'

The email exchanges came in April 2015, shortly after the former secretary of state announced her White House bid.

One idea was to have Clinton film a video, presumably about Clinton Foundation work, which Palmieri shot down.

Palmieri said that Philippe Reines, another top Clinton aide, was on board with the idea of making her state publicly that she never performed any favors for Clinton Foundation donors while working at the State Department.

'She could frame it this way,' Palmieri suggested, writing down a three-prong response.

'1) very proud of Clinton foundation work,' she wrote. '2) think people donate to it bc they want to support good works.'

'3) if anyone did ever give money in hopes of influencing something State did - they are foolish bc she never did that and never would,' Palmieri wrote.

She also pointed out that the secretary of state 'makes life and death decisions and those kinds of political considerations don't come into play.'

It was more than a year later when Donald Trump, Clinton's political rival, raised the most questions about the Clinton Foundation in pay-to-play political attacks against the former secretary of state.

'It's impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins,' Trump said back in August.

'It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office. They sold access and specific actions by and to them for money,' the Republican continued.

Former President Bill Clinton, the main player in the Clinton Foundation, called what Trump and Republicans were saying about the foundation 'bull,' when talking to CNBC's Becky Quick in September.

But even Clinton admitted that he couldn't keep working at the foundation – that's daughter Chelsea's job if Hillary Clinton is elected president – or continue holding the Clinton Global Initiative, a conference that centers on donors, often foreign or corporate, articulate commitments to give.

'If she was actually the president, it would raise too many questions,' Bill Clinton said in September. 'I think it's fair.'

Making a similar-sounding admission, he too suggested that some donors could be throwing dollars at the foundation for special access.

'Well, since we had more than 300,000 donors it would be unusual if nobody did,' Bill Clinton said in an interview with NPR, at the beginning of his final CGI

'It was natural for people who've been our political allies and personal friends to call and ask for things,' Clinton suggested. 'And I trusted the State Department wouldn't do anything they shouldn't do, from a meeting to a favor.'

'And so it didn't surprise me that people would call from time to time and maybe some of them gave money for that reason, but most of them gave it because they liked what we were doing because they knew me,' he added.



