Bill Clinton says he'll stop giving paid speeches if Hillary wins

Bill Clinton would likely not continue to give paid speeches if his wife, Hillary, were elected president, he said Wednesday.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said when asked at a Clinton Global Initiative event.


But the former president vigorously defended the work of the Clinton Foundation, which has come under fierce criticism and intense media scrutiny in recent months as Hillary Clinton has ramped up her presidential campaign.

In retrospect, Bill Clinton said, there are a few things he would change about the way the Clinton Foundation has conducted itself vis-à-vis controversial donations from foreign countries.

But not very many.

“There had been a lot of money that we didn’t take … one or two places that we didn’t go into because we have a strict no-corruption policy,” Clinton said during an interview with Bloomberg Television at the event.

By and large, Clinton said, the conflict arises from the fact that political and business reporters tend to see the world through their respective lenses and find it hard to see anything without a political tint.

“The truth is, most of us have big parts of our lives that don’t have anything to do with politics. I don’t think that it’s a bad thing that you have diverse businesses and philanthropists and NGOs and governments” working together to solve problems, Clinton said.

Donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments with less than stellar records on human rights have drawn intense media scrutiny, including from POLITICO, which reported that CGI’s meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, was being funded primarily with a $1 million donation from a phosphate company owned by the country’s government.

In April, the foundation agreed to limit — but not ban — donations from foreign governments, with Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom still in the clear.

Clinton made reference to a $500,000 gift from the Algerian government for Haiti earthquake relief efforts — which was not cleared by the State Department — during his discussion on Wednesday.

“There are very few countries in the world I would not accept for help to Haiti,” he said.

When the donations from foreign governments were made, Clinton said he “didn’t even know” if Hillary was going to run at the time.

It would be an “error” for the foundation to change what it’s doing because of how it is being perceived.

“There may be a thing or two that I’d change,” but it’s still the right thing to do, he said.