When Bill Clinton announced in August that the Clinton Foundation will no longer accept foreign or corporate donations if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, it was at least the third set of ethics rules that the post-presidential, pre-presidential charity has adopted to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.

At the time Mrs. Clinton was nominated to be secretary of state, the foundation was required to seek the approval of the State Department before accepting donations from foreign governments. When she launched her presidential campaign, the foundation was limited in what it could accept from foreign governments, but donations from individuals and corporations were accepted.

The ethics policy announced by the former president in August would have barred the contributions of 53 percent of the donors who gave $1 million or more to the Clinton Foundation, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. That list includes the government of Saudi Arabia, ExxonMobil and Barclay’s, a British bank.

By now it’s clear that a foundation tied to a government official cannot avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, even when ethics rules are followed, which may not always have been the case.

In 2012, while Clinton was secretary of state, a senior official of the foundation emailed associates that the U.S. ambassador from the Gulf state of Qatar had asked to see Bill Clinton “for five minutes” in New York to present him with a $1 million check that Qatar had promised for the former president’s birthday in 2011, according to a hacked email from the account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, released by WikiLeaks.

The State Department says it did not receive a request to approve a donation from Qatar in 2012, and the foundation says approval was not needed under an exception to the Clintons’ 2008 ethics agreement. President Clinton’s spokesman would not say whether the former president met with the ambassador, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of the email.

It doesn’t inspire confidence.

The appearance of conflict of interest hangs in the air.

As bad as that is, it would be worse if members of Clinton’s family continued to solicit enormous sums for the foundation from people who may be seeking access or influence in a Clinton administration.

If Hillary Clinton wins on Nov. 8, the first action she takes as president elect should be the dissolution of the Clinton Foundation. Its charitable work should be taken over by an organization that doesn’t have a satellite office in the West Wing.