Favors for Clinton Foundation supporters date to Hillary's time in the Senate

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 11 June 2015

Hillary Clinton has come under steady fire (only figuratively, of course) in recent months over charges that her tenure as secretary of state was marked by special favors — including weapons deals, uranium sale approval, and an advantageous lobbying environment for major corporations — for high dollar donors to the Clinton Foundation. Now, a Washington Times report suggests that Clinton's habit of making these alleged backroom deals began during her stint as a senator from 2001 to 2009:

Clinton introduced a bill when she was New York’s junior senator that allowed a donor to the Clinton Foundation to use tax-exempt bonds to build a shopping center in Syracuse, New York, public records show. [...]Clinton also used her leverage as a senator to help persuade the Chinese government to reduce tariffs on Corning Inc.’s fiber optic products. The central New York company’s employees and executives contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns and political action committee. [Washington Times]

In 2009, a Clinton representative said the shopping center bill was introduced "purely as part of [Clinton's] unwavering commitment to improving upstate New York’s struggling economy, and nothing more." As allegations pile on, however, voters may not continue to buy that argument: A poll conducted at the beginning of this month found that 61 percent of Americans believed it was somewhat or very likely Clinton was "selling influence to foreign contributors who made donations to the Clinton Foundation" at the State Department.

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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.