Bill Clinton Defends The Work Of The Clinton Foundation

Former President Bill Clinton has defended his charity, the Clinton Foundation, amid accusations of corruption and calls for the organization to be shut down.

The Clinton Foundation has been criticized after freshly released State Department emails indicated that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton showed favoritism toward the organization’s donors while she was Secretary of State, according to Mediaite.

On Aug. 24, Bill addressed the controversy during a campaign event in Atlanta, Georgia.

“We’re trying to do good things,” Clinton told ABC News. “If there’s something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don’t know what it is. The people who gave the money knew exactly what they were doing. I have nothing to say about it except I’m really proud.”

The foundation has been criticized by Republicans for having spent only 6 percent of its donations on other charitable organizations. This is a misleading figure, because the organization itself is a charitable organization that uses its donations for its own humanitarian pursuits.

Watchdog group CharityWatch found that the Clinton Foundation actually spent 88 percent of its 2013 budget on charity programs, a significantly higher amount than the industry standard of 75 percent.

In 2014, 57 percent of the Clinton Foundation’s $249 million in spending went to the offshoot Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), a nonprofit that specializes in malaria prevention and provides 8 million HIV/AIDS patients worldwide with affordable medication, the Daily Kos reports.

Much of the foundation’s budget also goes to the Clinton Climate Initiative, which works to develop clean energies, halt deforestation, and aid island nations faced with rising ocean tides.

Concerns still persist about the Clintons’ potential conflict of interests with the roughly 300,000 donors to their foundation. On Aug. 22, Bill announced that he would step down from the charity’s board and cease performing as a fundraiser if his wife is elected president.

In addition, the Clinton Foundation would also stop accepting foreign and corporate donations.

The former president told reporters that the foundation would not shut down but instead be transitioned to new leadership.

“You just can’t do this stuff overnight,” Bill said. “Not if you don’t want anybody to lose their jobs or their form of income or their lives. That’s my only concern. …  I’m really proud of what we did and nothing that has been said in the last few days has done anything to dampen that.”

Sources: ABC News, Daily Kos, Mediaite / Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr