In April 2012, representatives from Qatar were apparently hoping to get "five minutes" with former President Bill Clinton while in New York to present him with a $1 million check for his foundation as a birthday gift from the previous year.
While it is unclear whether that meeting took place, the offer, mentioned in one of thousands of hacked Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks last week, was an example of the complex ethical issues the Clinton Foundation faced in managing relationships with foreign governments when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. It also raised questions about whether the foundation had fully followed procedures it had voluntarily agreed to in order to avoid those issues.
The foundation's ties to foreign governments and financiers have long been fodder for Hillary Clinton's critics -- chief among them Donald Trump -- who contend that foreigners used donations to the foundation to curry favor with the Clintons while Hillary Clinton was the country's top diplomat.
Emails released this year from her time at the State Department showed that foundation donors sought and in some cases obtained meetings with department officials. None showed that she had made decisions based on contributions to the foundation, and the Clinton campaign has said she never did.
But the appearance of special access was enough that the foundation announced this summer that if Hillary Clinton were elected president, the foundation would cease accepting foreign donations.
Similar concerns were in the air in 2009, when she took office as secretary of state. So the foundation agreed then that it would ask the State Department to review donations from any new foreign government donors, or from existing donors that were looking to expand their giving significantly.
A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said Saturday, "We do not have a record of a submission" from the Clinton Foundation related to a 2012 donation from Qatar.
In a hacked email from April 2012 released by WikiLeaks last week, Amitabh Desai, the Clinton Foundation's foreign policy director, wrote to senior foundation aides that he had recently met with ambassadors from several nations, including Qatar, while in Washington.
Referring to Bill Clinton by his initials, he wrote that Qatar "would like to see WJC 'for five minutes' in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC's birthday in 2011." He also said that Qatari officials "would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti" and that they had "allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest."
Qatar had donated to the foundation since 2002. The country, a tiny oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchy, has a complicated relationship with the United States; it is an ally, but it has also been suspected of quietly supporting militant Islamic groups.
Clinton Foundation officials said Saturday that they did not have to clear the $1 million gift with the State Department because it was not a "material increase" from Qatar's previous donation levels.
The claim, however, was impossible to verify because the foundation is not required to publicly report every donation it receives and has not done so.
"Qatar has been among our hundreds of thousands of donors who have supported the Clinton Foundation's overall humanitarian work, including making lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment available to millions of people in more than 70 countries, combating childhood obesity here in the United States and working to empower girls and women around the world," said Craig Minassian, a foundation spokesman.
A Section on 10/17/2016