Acting DNC chair says she doesn't 'see what the smoke is' about Clinton Foundation corruption allegations
Acting Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile said Sunday she doesn't see cause for concern in newly released emails showing Clinton Foundation staff requesting special seating for foundation donors at State Department events during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
"The way I look at it, I've been a government official," Brazile said in an interview on ABC's This Week. "So, you know, this notion that, somehow or another, someone who is a supporter, someone who is a donor, somebody who's an activist, saying 'I want access, I want to come into a room and I want to meet people' — we often criminalize behavior that is normal. I don't see what the smoke is."
Brazile may have been referencing remarks from Clinton herself earlier this week, when the candidate told Anderson Cooper "there's a lot of smoke, and there's no fire" where accusations of a corrupt, "pay to play" relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department are concerned. Watch Brazile's comments below. Bonnie Kristian
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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.
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