The Clinton Foundation's acting CEO, Maura Pally, on Sunday admitted to some mistakes in the organization's listing of donations from foreign governments on its tax forms.
In a statement, Pally wrote: "Our total revenue was accurately reported on each year's form -- our error was that government grants were mistakenly combined with other donations. Those same grants have always been properly listed and broken out and available for anyone to see on our audited financial statements, posted on our website."
The statement comes as Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer has been delineating claims in his forthcoming book, which he says shows a pattern in which the Clinton Foundation received donations from foreign governments before the U.S., under Hillary Rodham Clinton's leadership as secretary of state, made favorable decisions in regard to those nations.
Pally's statement also acknowledged that those grants were not always properly reported.
"So yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don't happen in the future," the statement said. "We are committed to operating the Foundation responsibly and effectively to continue the life-changing work that this philanthropy is doing every day."
Schweizer on Sunday appeared on ABC's This Week and on Fox's Fox News Sunday to talk about the book. In both of those appearances, he likened the situation to issues of insider trading or corruption in which it is impossible to find a piece of evidence that clearly demarcates a quid pro quo or an explicit agreement, but the charges can still be proved by showing a pattern of mutually beneficial decisions.
On This Week, he used as examples the corruption cases against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and the recent charges against New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez. Both were accused (and in McDonnell's case, convicted) of accepting gifts in exchange for favors.
"For example, Gov. [McDonnell] down in Virginia, or you look at Sen. Menendez, in these cases, you didn't have evidence of a quid pro quo. What you had was funds flowing to elected officials, some of them gifts, some of them campaign contributions and actions that were being taken by those public officials that seemed to benefit the contributors," Schweizer said.
The other example Schweizer used in both interviews was that of insider trading. In insider trading cases, he said, there's rarely an email that specifically refers to inside information that will affect the value of a security. Instead, those cases are prosecuted by demonstrating a pattern.
"The way they look at it, they look at a pattern of stock trades," Schweizer said. "If the person has access to that information and then they do a series of well-timed trades, that warrants investigation. I think the same thing applies here."
In her statement, Pally also described the foundation's work with the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which she said received funding from a separate organization in Canada.
She said that partnership does not disclose its donors because under Canadian law they are not disclosed without previous permission from each donor.
"This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency," she said.
Since announcing her run for president, Clinton has sought to dismiss questions about financial support of her family charity and allegations of undue influence as "distractions and attacks" by Republicans seeking to discredit her. The philanthropy was started in 2001 by former President Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea will be starting a nine-day trip to Africa on Wednesday to highlight the group's work on issues such as economic growth and empowerment, climate change and empowering women and girls.
Information for this article was contributed by Ali Elkin of Bloomberg News and by Hope Yen of The Associated Press.
A Section on 04/27/2015