Getty Foreign donation slipped Clinton vetting process

The Clinton Foundation failed to submit a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government to the State Department for approval under an ethics agreement put in place as Hillary Clinton was being confirmed as secretary of state, a foundation spokesman acknowledged Wednesday.

The charity’s failure to submit the 2010 donation for clearance by State Department ethics lawyers and to disclose that omission for more than five years seem likely to fuel questions about the rigor of the ethics deal that have arisen in recent weeks as Hillary Clinton readies an expected bid for the White House. POLITICO’s review of hundreds of records from Clinton’s State Department tenure found only two instances in which department lawyers raised serious concerns about her husband’s speeches or consulting deals.


The Algerian grant would have fallen in a different category of transactions demanding scrutiny: donations from foreign governments.

“Immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, the Embassy of Algeria made an unsolicited donation of $500K to [the] Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief fund,” a foundation spokesman said in a statement Wednesday night. “This donation was disclosed publicly on the Clinton Foundation website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed. This was a one-time, specific donation to help Haiti and Algeria had not donated to the Clinton Foundation before and has not since.”

The Washington Post first reported the foundation’s failure to seek approval for the Algeria donation.

The ethics agreement, which was struck after President-elect Barack Obama announced his plans to nominate Hillary Clinton to lead the State Department, was a complex, three-part pact that involved pledges by the former first lady, former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

The part of the deal that applied to the Clinton Foundation blocked donations from foreign governments to one major foundation effort: the Clinton Global Initiative. That portion of the agreement also limited, but did not block outright, foreign government gifts to four other Clinton Foundation programs: the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Clinton Climate Initiative, the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative and the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative.

Under the deal, those four entities could continue to accept funds from foreign governments already supporting those programs, but any material increases in donations and any donations from new countries were supposed to be submitted for review by State Department ethics officials. The Clinton Foundation insisted at the time, and reiterated this week, that those steps were voluntary, not required by law.

Though the foundation is now conceding that the failure to clear the Algeria donation was a mistake, it’s not entirely clear that the treatment of the gift violated the literal terms of the November 2008 agreement, signed by Bruce Lindsey, then the Clinton Foundation’s CEO, and Valerie Jarrett, then the co-chair of Obama’s transition team and now a top White House aide.

The deal, hammered out during sometimes heated negotiations between Clinton and Obama aides, set rules only for the Clinton Global Initiative and the four other Clinton Foundation units noted above. The agreement could not possibly have specifically addressed the project aimed at alleviating the impact of the Haiti earthquake, which took place 14 months after the pact was signed. The foundation’s Haiti relief fund did not exist before the earthquake.

The agreement also appears to be silent on how any new Clinton Foundation project would be treated, although the foundation did pledge to disclose all of its contributors annually. The foundation says it did so with respect to the Algeria gift.

Other parts of the agreement covered Hillary Clinton’s pledges to abide by ethics laws and rules as secretary of state and Bill Clinton’s promise to have his consulting deals and paid speeches vetted by the State Department.

POLITICO reported Wednesday that those approvals generally sailed through without resistance from State Department lawyers, though concerns were raised in a couple of cases.

The ethics agreement expired when Hillary Clinton left office in 2013. The foundation has since resumed raising funds from foreign governments — a move that has generated some controversy as the former secretary of state prepares for a possible presidential bid.

A foundation spokesman said last week that, if Hillary Clinton again becomes a presidential candidate, the organization would likely return to the rules in place limiting foreign government gifts.