Hillary Clinton must cut herself off completely from the Clinton Foundation if she becomes president, The New York Times said in an editorial published Tuesday, calling it "an ethical imperative" for the Democratic nominee.
Although the Times says there is no solid proof for Republican nominee Donald Trump's charges that major donors to the foundation received special "pay-to-play" treatment from a Clinton-run State Department, the emails and other reports do indicate that while she was secretary of state, "it was hard to tell where the foundation ended and the State Department began."
One such suspicious example, the newspaper pointed out, was an arrangement where Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin was "paid simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm run by Doug Band, the former adviser to Mr. Clinton who helped create the foundation — and who sent emails to Ms. Abedin seeking favors for foundation donors."
The editorial said the foundation should take much more drastic steps than what it has done so far, insisting it should immediately and completely bar donations from foreign and corporate entities.
The paper added that if Clinton does win, then Bill and Chelsea "should both end their operational involvement in the foundation and its affiliates for the duration of her presidency, relinquishing any control over spending, hiring and board appointments."
Adding that the foundation "has become a symbol of the Clintons' laudable ambitions, but also of their tangled alliances and operational opacity." The paper insisted that "achieving true distance from the foundation is not only necessary to ensure its effectiveness, it is an ethical imperative for Mrs. Clinton."
The editorial came as ABC News reported that the most recent batch of released emails revealed that Band pressed the Clinton-run State Department in 2010 for large donors to the organization to get seats at an official lunch with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
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