At their daily press briefing on Tuesday, the State Department declined to comment on allegations that the King of Morocco was given special treatment or access in exchange for a $12 million donation to the Clinton family's charitable foundation. Some time before announcing her candidacy for president, Hillary Clinton agreed to attend a Clinton Global Intiative fundraiser in Morocco with the understanding that King Mohammed VI would make a donation. Clinton ultimately decided to send Bill and Chelsea to take her place because her campaign staff warned her that the meeting might look bad, as emails recently released by WikiLeaks demonstrate.



"This was HRC’s idea,” Clinton aide Huma Abedin said about a planned meeting with the King in an email to John Podesta released this week by WikiLeaks. "Our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request. The King has personally committed approx $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting. It will break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months." In another email, Abedin wrote: "[Hillary Clinton] created this mess and she knows it."



"I can't speak for every decision made during that time frame," State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. "And I'm not going to speak to the veracity of these documents."



On “Fox News Sunday” this week, host Chris Wallace pressed Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook about the controversy. "Why wasn’t that classic pay-to-play?" Wallace asked. "There’s nothing new here," Mook replied.



Later in the program, veteran journalist Bob Woodward said "it is a scandal" and declared it clearly "corrupt."



The Trump campaign has pounced on this as an example of Clinton's "pay-to-play" politics:



