2015 State Department Subpoena

In February 2016, The Washington Post reported that the United States Department of State issued a subpoena to the foundation in fall of 2015. According to the report, the subpoena focused on "documents about the charity's projects that may have required approval from federal government during Hillary Clinton's term as secretary of state" and "also asked for records related to Huma Abedin, longtime Clinton aide who for six months in 2012 was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation, Clinton's personal office, and a private consulting firm with ties to the Clintons

Criticism of financial practices

Questions have been raised about the foundation's financial practices, about its fundraising from foreign governments and corporations, about the transparency of its reporting of its donors, and about possible conflicts of interest between donations to the foundation and the actions of Hillary Clinton when she was U.S. Secretary of State during 2009–13 and in connection with her subsequent 2016 presidential campaign.[2][66][75][76][77]

In August 2013, The New York Times reported on the foundation's recent developments, including financial losses, staff conflicts, and spending excesses.[2] In response, Bill Clinton published an open letter saying the deficits described by the paper were misleading and a consequence of the unique accounting and tax reporting requirements placed upon foundations.[78]

In Clinton Cash, a May 2015 book regarding the Foundation, author Peter Schweizer asserts that there is a "pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds."[77] Fact-checkers find considerable shortcomings in Schweizer's accusations.[79][80][81][82] Clinton's campaign has denied any impropriety, and called the book part of the Republicans’ coordinated attack strategy on Mrs. Clinton "twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories".[76][83][84][85]

Through 2016 the foundation had raised an estimated $2 billion from U.S. corporations, foreign governments and corporations, political donors, and various other groups and individuals."[3] The foundation "has won accolades from philanthropy experts and has drawn bipartisan support, with members of the George W. Bush administration often participating in its programs,"[3] and much of its work has been "widely praised."[6] At the same time, the "overlap between the Clintons' political network and their charitable work" (mostly in the form of donors who contribute to both the Clintons' political campaigns and to the foundation),[3] and the foundation's acceptance of funds from wealthy interests, has been controversial.[3][6] Some ethics experts, such as Stephen Gillers of the New York University School of Law and philanthropy expert Joel Fleishman, suggest that an appearance of a conflict of interest (although not an actual conflict of interest) would be raised if Hillary Clinton serves as president while the Clintons continue to raise money for the Foundation, with Gillers saying that "If Bill [Clinton] seeks to raise large sums of money from donors who also have an interest in U.S. policy, the public will rightly question whether the grants affected United States foreign policy.

Transparency

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. Commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the Clintons should make public the names of foundation donors to avoid any appearance of impropriety.[64]

A lengthy donors list was then released by the Foundation in December 2008,[16] which included several politically sensitive donors, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Blackwater Worldwide.[17] The Foundation insisted that the disclosures would ensure that "not even the appearance of a conflict of interest" would exist once Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.[17]

The ethics agreement between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation that was put into force at the beginning of the Secretary of State Clinton's tenure came under scrutiny from the news media during February 2015. A Wall Street Journal report found that the Clinton Foundation had resumed accepting donations from foreign governments once Secretary Clinton's tenure had ended.[65] Contributions from foreign donors who are prohibited by law from contributing to political candidates in the U.S. constitute a major portion of the foundation's income. The foundation's chief communications officer Craig Minassian explained that it is a "false choice to suggest that people who may be interested in supporting political causes wouldn’t also support philanthropic work."[3] A Washington Post inquiry into donations by foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation during the secretary's tenure found six cases where such governments continued making donations at the same level they had before Clinton became secretary, which was permissible under the agreement, but also one instance of a new donation, $500,000 from Algeria for earthquake relief in Haiti, that was outside the bounds of the continuation provision and should have received a special ethics review, but did not.[66] Foundation officials said that if the former secretary decided to run for president in 2016, they would again consider what steps to take in reference to foreign donations.[66] But in general, they stressed that, "As with other global charities, we rely on the support of individuals, organizations, corporations and governments who have the shared goal of addressing critical global challenges in a meaningful way. When anyone contributes to the Clinton Foundation, it goes towards foundation programs that help save lives."[66] State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki attested that the foundation's commitment to the ethics agreement in question "has been over and above the letter of the law".[67]

In March 2015, Reuters reported that the Clinton Foundation had broken its promise to publish all of its donors, as well as its promise to let the State Department review all of its donations from foreign governments.[68] In April 2015, the New York Times reported that when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, the State Department had approved a deal to sell American uranium to a Russian state-owned enterprise Uranium One whose chairman had donated to the Clinton Foundation, and that Clinton had broken her promise to publicly identify such donations.[69] The State Department "was one of nine government agencies, not to mention independent federal and state nuclear regulators, that had to sign off on the deal."[70] FactCheck.org notes that there "no evidence" that that the donations influenced Clinton’s official actions or that she was involved in the State Department's decision to approve the deal,[71] and PolitiFact concluded that any "suggestion of a quid pro quo is unsubstantiated."[70]

After her January 2009 appointment as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton proposed hiring long-time Clinton friend and confidant Sidney Blumenthal as an advisor, however, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, blocked Blumenthal's appointment at the State Department.[72] Blumenthal was subsequently hired by the Clinton Foundation and after the 2011 uprising in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi, Blumenthal prepared, from public and other sources, about 25 memos which he sent as emails to Clinton in 2011 and 2012 with advice regarding Libyan matters