“I have said to the best of my knowledge nobody ever got anything from the State Department because they supported the Clinton Foundation,” Bill Clinton said. | Getty Bill Clinton: Foundation has been 'as transparent as we can be'

Former President Bill Clinton on Monday told CBS News’ Charlie Rose that the Clinton Foundation has been “as transparent as we can be” in response to questions about whether or not donors had received special treatment from Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

“I have said to the best of my knowledge nobody ever got anything from the State Department because they supported the Clinton Foundation,” Clinton told Rose. “If they did and it was inappropriate, I would say that was wrong too. I have proved that I’m not averse to apologizing for things that I think were wrong. So I am unaware of that.”


The Clinton Foundation has been under intense scrutiny for months regarding questions about foreign donors and preferential treatment, with the public release of emails between her aides and foundation executives fueling the controversy.

Bill Clinton argued a difference between long-term contacts requesting meetings and the claims of pay-to-play that Donald Trump has made.

"If you think nobody should ever call somebody they know and say, ‘Well, so-and-so would like a meeting’—that’s just the way the national government works, so I can’t say anything about that,” he said. “But I can say to the best of my knowledge … that the people they accused or implied gave money to the foundation just so they could have some in with Hillary did not do that. That’s simply not true.”

The foundation has since announced it will mostly stop accepting foreign and corporate donations and that Bill Clinton will step down if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

“I believe, first of all, we’ve been as transparent as we can be,” Clinton said. “And we’ve been more transparent than any other foundation, more transparent than any other foundation has ever been asked to be, and certainly more transparent than anybody else in this line of work is.”

Trump, who has donated to the Clinton Foundation, in August called for it to be shut down.

"The Clintons have spent decades as insiders lining their own pockets and taking care of donors instead of the American people. It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history," he said in a statement at the time.