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Friends and associates say that while Bill Clinton knows his role in the high-profile charity has to change, settling on how and when he might walk away has been emotional. He’s also said to be deeply frustrated with the criticism shadowing his potential exit.

“We’re trying to do good things. If there’s something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don’t know what it is,” he said last week.

Mark Updegrove, the director of the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library and author of “Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House,” said that while the foundation has unquestionably done good work around the world, the former president has no choice but to step aside if his wife wins the White House.

“Bill Clinton is smart enough to know that as much as the Clinton Foundation might help to augment his legacy, Hillary Clinton becoming president will be a far greater legacy than anything he himself can do as a former president,” Updegrove said.

The foundation made some adjustments after she became secretary of state, but it has still faced numerous questions about how rigorously firewalls were upheld that were meant to separate donors from her government work.

An Associated Press review of Clinton’s calendars from a two-year stretch show that more than half of those she met with from outside of government had made contributions to the foundation.

For Trump and other Republicans, the Clintons’ overlapping worlds are rife with ethical lapses. And for some Democrats, even that perception is worrisome in an election year where control of the White House and Congress are at stake.