All the bigwig Clinton Foundation donors that also lobbied the Clinton State Department

Hillary and Bill Clinton
(Image credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

The last month has seen considerable attention given to foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation as possible evidence of corruption in the State Department under Hillary Clinton's direction. However, an investigation from the Washington Examiner finds that paired Clinton Foundation donations and State Department lobbying were common among Fortune 100 companies as well:

While exactly half of the [Fortune 100] corporations appeared to have lobbied the State Department between 2009 and 2012, according to lobbying disclosures from the Center for Responsive Politics, foundation records show 55 of the firms donated to the charity.Roughly 65 percent of foundation donors among the Fortune 100 also spent money on lobbying the State Department. [...] Just 14 of the 45 companies that did not give to the charity lobbied the agency during that same time. [Washington Examiner]

The companies that both donated and lobbied are a who's who of big business:

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"117777","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"883","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"600"}}]]

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

(Washington Examiner)

As the Examiner report concludes, this pattern suggests that major corporations might have viewed the Clinton Foundation as a viable backchannel to favorable lobbying outcomes.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.