Strange doings at the Clinton Foundation

Radar - As Hillary Clinton ramps up her race to the White House, she is facing a growing wave of criticism behind the scenes about whether her charity, the Clinton Foundation, is properly using donations. Tax records obtained by Radar Online reveal, for example, that the organization spent nearly as much on travel expenses as on grants.

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, generated $144,382,361 in revenue in 2013, according to IRS tax returns reviewed by RadarOnline.com, but only paid out $8,865,052 million, roughly 5% of their revenue, in grants.

At the same time, travel expenses totaled $8,448,502 million, with supplemental information stating “The Board recognizes that, due to extraordinary security and other requirements, William J. Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton may require the need to travel by charter or in first class, the determination of which will be made on a case-by-case basis.”

Salaries of executives also increased from $18,438,574 total in 2012 to $29,914,108 total in 2013. With just 402 employees, that means the average salary is $74,413, well above the national average of $50,500. Specifically, then-Director of Marketing Frederic Poust brought in a whopping $464,229 in salary for 2013, with the CFO, CEO, Executive Director and other senior staff making well into the six figures.

In addition, the foundation bled cash for its swanky fundraising events… Net income from the fundraising events was in the red for $859,030.

This spring, the foundation was placed on Charity Navigator’s Watch List. “The organization doesn’t meet our criteria,” the site noted. While the post explained that it was not necessarily a condemnation of their practices, they cited concerns about potential conflict of interest, inflated salaries, and the possibility of a pending audit.

On a related note, earlier this year Reuters reported that the foundation had failed to include funds received from the United States government and other foreign countries on their tax returns for three years running.

“Those entries were errors, according to the foundation ,” the outlet reported. “Several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation’s work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation’s annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.”

Back in 2013, the New York Times, published a similarly critical report, which stated that the Foundation “had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.”

Indeed, during Secretary Clinton’s presidential run in 2007 and 2008, the foundation incurred a $40 million deficit.

The organization changed its name from the Clinton Global Initiative to the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation in 2013, as the former First Lady moved into New York headquarters.

Ben Smith, Politico, 2011- The remnants of the once-powerful Democratic Leadership Council, which closed its doors earlier this year after a period of ideological and organizational decline, are being absorbed into the Clinton Foundation, founder Al From said in an email. From wrote this morning:

    The DLC has accomplished much of what we first set out to achieve. As a result, the DLC itself ceased operations earlier this year, but the records and materials prepared and formulated by the DLC over the years have significant historical value.

    Because many of these materials show and explain the growth and development of President Clinton's policies, passions and legacy, the William J. Clinton Foundation has purchased all of the records and materials of the DLC. The Clinton Presidential Center is an important location for telling the story not just of the Clinton administration but also of the world at the latter part of the 20th century. We believe these records are an important part of that history, and believe the Clinton Foundation is an appropriate and fitting repository.

The DLC sought for a time to identify itself with Obama's message and his campaign, but found itself relatively unwelcome there and the final move cements its place as a central force in Clintonism and the Clinton historical record.

The move may also resolve any debt the organization was coping with, and allow it to fold cleanly.

Wikipedia - Around 2007, the Clinton Foundation was criticized for a lack of transparency. Although U.S. law did not require nonprofit charities — including presidential foundations — to disclose the identities of their contributors, critics said that the names of donors should be disclosed because Hillary Rodham Clinton was running to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States….

By 2011, Chelsea Clinton was taking a dominant role in the foundation, and had a seat on its board….To raise money for the Foundation, she gives paid speeches, such as her 2014 address at the University of Missouri in Kansas City for the opening of a women's hall of fame, for which she was paid $65,000. The University had attempted to book Hillary Clinton, but reconsidered when they discovered her usual fee was $275,000. This reportedly prompted an emailed response from a university official of "Yikes!" The University then booked Chelsea instead, with her fee going directly to the Clinton Foundation.