Clinton charities now re-filing years of tax returns after Reuters found 'errors'

Clinton charities now re-filing years of tax returns after Reuters found 'errors'

Ed Lasky

Clinton rules mean they feel entitled to …well…everything.

Now that Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy, even the mainstream media has started to raise questions regarding the Clinton Foundation. In the wake of reports of pay-to-play donations made to the foundation from rogue nations and Iranian sanction busters, Reuters has investigated the disclosures made by the foundation for years and found them wanting.

From Jonathan Allen:

Hillary Clinton's family's charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.

The foundation and its list of donors have been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks. Republican critics say the foundation makes Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, vulnerable to undue influence. Her campaign team calls these claims "absurd conspiracy theories."

The charities' errors generally take the form of under-reporting or over-reporting, by millions of dollars, donations from foreign governments, or in other instances omitting to break out government donations entirely when reporting revenue, the charities confirmed to Reuters.

The errors, which have not been previously reported, appear on the form 990s that all non-profit organizations must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service to maintain their tax-exempt status. A charity must show copies of the forms to anyone who wants to see them to understand how the charity raises and spends money. (snip)

For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.

Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation's work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation's annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.

So the foundation was reasonably transparent until 2010 and then went "dark" when it came to donations from foreign governments. These types of donations have become controversial since they include donations from governments run by dictators and human rights violators -- including regimes that oppress women, gays and minorities. They also include donations from governments that are unfriendly to America -- but, apparently, friendly to the Clintons.

The fact that the disclosures stopped in 2010 suggests the foundation changed its policies reporting tax returns as Hillary Clinton approached the "start date" of announcing her campaign fro presidency.

The foundation has always been a way to enrich the Clintons and as a way to park and pay for staffers for the unofficial Hillary for President campaign. So, in essence, foreigners were funding a de facto Hillary campaign effort.