Should Clinton win the White House in November, the foundation will only accept donations from U.S. citizens and independent charities. | Getty Clinton Foundation to stop accepting foreign and corporate donations if Hillary wins

The Clinton Foundation will no longer accept foreign and corporate donations if Hillary Clinton is elected president, a spokesman for the foundation confirmed on Thursday.

Should Clinton win the White House in November, the foundation will accept donations only from U.S. citizens and independent charities, The Associated Press first reported.


Former President Bill Clinton told staffers about the change during a meeting in which he also announced that the Clinton Global Initiative will hold its final annual meeting next month and that he will resign from the foundation’s board, the spokesman confirmed.

While the former president said the foundation plans to continue its endeavors, it also expects to spend up to a year refocusing its efforts. Bill and Chelsea Clinton said they faced no outside pressure to make changes but sought to avoid potential conflicts should Hillary Clinton become president.

The Clinton family has come under renewed scrutiny over the foundation in recent days, following fresh reports suggesting that donors had sought access to the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

Documents obtained by Citizens United, a conservative watchdog group, showed that the State Department had explored the purchase of a development managed by Clinton Foundation donor Ronald Chagoury and funded by him and his brother, Gilbert Chagoury, as a potential location for a new U.S. consulate on the coast of Nigeria. Clinton, however, had left State before the department sent a letter expressing interest in purchasing the property in 2013.

The Boston Globe editorial board this week called for the foundation to stop accepting funds — entirely — in an article published Tuesday, calling the family nonprofit a political and ethical liability for the Democratic presidential nominee.



“The once-and-maybe-future first family will have plenty to keep them busy next year if Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in November,” the Globe said. “The foundation should remove a political — and actual — distraction and stop accepting funding. If Clinton is elected, the foundation should be shut down.”

The foundation, a nonprofit focused on global health, climate change, economic development and improving opportunities for women and girls, has become a target of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Trump last week accused Clinton of engaging in quid pro quo when she headed the State Department after a release of department emails showed Clinton aides interacting with a megadonor who sought a meeting with a U.S. ambassador.

In June, the real estate mogul demanded that Clinton return $25 million the foundation reportedly received from Saudi Arabia. He also alleged that the foundation receives money from “many countries” that want to enslave women and kill gay people and has labeled the organization his rival’s “private hedge fund.”

The foundation came under withering criticism in 2015 as Hillary Clinton neared the official launch of her presidential bid, with particular attention paid to donations from countries with poor human rights records. In April of that year, the foundation announced that it would boost the frequency of its disclosure statements and limit donations from foreign governments to just six Western countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.