The Clinton Foundation will end its practice of accepting foreign and corporate donations, Bill Clinton told staff during a meeting Thursday, the Associated Press reports.
The Clinton Global Initiative, an arm of the Clinton family’s nonprofit, will also hold its final meeting next month regardless of whether Hillary Clinton wins the White House in November, according to the AP.
The decision comes days after the editorial board of the Boston Globe called on the Clintons to shutter the nonprofit if Hillary Clinton is elected.
“The foundation should remove a political — and actual — distraction and stop accepting funding. If Clinton is elected, the foundation should be shut down,” the editorial board wrote.
The left-leaning newspaper argued that the Clinton Foundation poses great potential for conflicts of interest during a Clinton presidency. It cited the recent revelation that in April 2009, a Clinton Foundation adviser emailed Hillary Clinton’s State Department aides to ask for favors for a billionaire Clinton Foundation donor and another associate.
The overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department violated the spirit of an agreement Hillary Clinton made before she took the job of secretary of state that she would not be involved in Clinton Foundation activities.
According to the AP, the Clinton Foundation will begin accepting donations only from American citizens and independent charities.
The Clintons have failed to follow through with previous pledges related to their family charity. Before Hillary Clinton took over the State Department she signed a memorandum of understanding with the White House stating that the Clinton Foundation would disclose all of its donors each year. But the organization failed to report a $500,000 contribution from the Algerian government.
The Clintons also failed to disclose donations given to the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, two other offshoots of the Clinton Foundation.
In a statement, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus called the decision “too little, too late” and urged the Clintons to return donations they’ve received from foreign governments with poor human rights records.
“After all, if everything was above board while Hillary Clinton ran the State Department as the Clintons have said, then why change a thing?” Priebus asked.
“Now that they have admitted there is a problem, the Clinton Foundation should immediately cease accepting foreign donations and return every penny ever taken from other countries, several of which have atrocious human rights records and ties to terrorism,” he continued.
