According to a spokesperson, the U.S. State Department “will not review the breaches of the 2008 ethics agreement Hillary Clinton signed in order to become secretary of state after her family’s charities admitted in March that they had not complied.” Reuters,
Clinton, now the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential election, had promised the federal government that the Clinton Foundation and its associated charities would name all donors annually while she was the nation’s top diplomat.
She also promised that the charities would let the State Department’s ethics office review beforehand any proposed new foreign governments donations.
In March, the charities confirmed to Reuters for the first time that they had not complied with those pledges for most of Clinton’s four years at the State Department.
The State Department “regrets” that it did not get to review the new foreign government funding, but does not plan to look into the matter further, spokesman Jeff Rathke said on Thursday.
“The State Department has not and does not intend to initiate a formal review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” Rathke told reporters.
The broken ethics agreement has made it harder for Clinton to deflect accusations in recent weeks that foreigners banned from donating to U.S. political campaigns can instead curry favor with her by giving to the charity that bears her name.
