Clinton Foundation Meeting in Morocco Last Month Cost Taxpayers $21K

   Bill Clinton, no stranger to controversy, raised eyebrows again with a Clinton Global Initiative gathering earlier in May, as ABC News put it, "at a five-star luxury hotel in Morocco [hosted] by one of the world's most controversial mining companies, criticized for 'serious human rights violations' by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice." And as is the case with every trip a former president takes (and President Clinton takes a lot of trips), the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for security expenses. For the Morocco trip, the hotel costs alone for the Secret Service came to $21,165:

     Other expenses related to the Morocco trip could not be located on the government spending website, but vehicle expenses likely ran into the thousands of dollars. Last Christmas/New Years, as THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported, a vacation for the Clintons in the Dominican Republic cost the taxpayers over $104,000 in hotel costs alone for the Secret Service. Three contracts discovered after that article was published show that vehicles for the Secret Service for the Clintons' Dominican vacation cost almost $20,000.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Confirmed by ABC News: George Stephanopoulos Was Clinton Global Initiative Member in 2010, 2011

    John Sexton of Breitbart News did some more digging and uncovered additional details about George Stephanopoulos's involvement with the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Global Initiative that I first reported Friday. Sexton was also able to get a response from ABC News:

George Stephanopoulos’ connections to the Clinton Foundation may be more substantial than he has so far admitted. 

An archived page of the Clinton Global Initiative website lists George Stephanopoulos as a “notable member” for the years 2010 and 2011. ABC News has confirmed Mr. Stephanopoulos was a member during both years.

    Read his entire story here.

Note: Mediaite also ran a piece on Stephanopoulos and CGI based on my original story.

George Stephanopoulos Was a Member of the Clinton Global Initiative [Updated]

UPDATE: See new post including new information via John Sexton of Breitbart News.

     George Stephanopoulos, under fire for not clearly disclosing donations of $75,000 to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation (via Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon), was at some point a member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an arm of the Clinton Foundation. The foundation's website lists Stephanopoulos along with other "notable past members" of CGI, among them Tom Brokaw, Anderson Cooper, and Greta Van Susteren, Rupert Murdock, and T. Boone Pickens:

     According to the foundation, the "CGI membership fee is $20,000 per calendar year, $19,000 of which is tax deductable [sic]." (Some complimentary memberships are available for "nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations.") Stephanopoulos has acknowledged (via CNN) giving $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation between 2012 and 2014; the Foundation's website reports Stephanopoulos as giving between $50,001 and $100,000. After an initial response, the communications office of the Clinton Foundation did not answer emailed questions regarding the duration or timing of Stephanopoulos's membership, if his membership was a paid membership, or if the tax-deductible membership fees count toward donation totals.
     Membership benefits include annual meeting attendance and various networking opportunities. At one time, membership included access to a members-only website that has "a member directory, a messaging system, and commitment information," but it's not clear if that website still exists.
     George Stephanopoulos's relationship with the Clinton Foundation goes back at least nine years. He acted as moderator of a panel discussion that included former President Jimmy Carter at CGI's annual meeting in 2006 (where he was referred to on the Foundation's blog as "the smart and funny George Stephanopoulos"). As recently as 2014 he served on a panel of judges along with Chelsea Clinton at "Up to Us, a nationwide campus competition sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative University and Net Impact", which seeks to engage students in "America’s long-term fiscal and economic challenges." Stephanopoulos also participated in the CGI annual meeting in 2007 and 2009.
     ABC News did not return an email seeking answers about what years Stephanopoulos was a member of CGI, if he paid the membership fee, and, if so, was the membership fee in addition to the $75,000 of donations he has acknowledged.

Clinton Foundation Retains 'Hillary' in Official Name

     Shortly after Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president, the Clinton Foundation announced: "In light of Secretary Clinton’s decision to run for President, Secretary Clinton has stepped down from the Clinton Foundation board[.]" While Mrs. Clinton was removed from the board (she no longer appears on the website page listing directors), the foundation has not given any indication that her name will be removed from the official name of the foundation, the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
     When President Clinton started the foundation after leaving the White House, it was initially called the William J. Clinton Foundation. However, according to the foundation, the name was changed in 2013 to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation after Mrs. Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, in part to "acknowledge [her] role in shaping the Foundation":

In 2013, to recognize the contributions of Secretary Clinton and Chelsea to the Foundation and to acknowledge their role in shaping the Foundation, the Foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

     Now that Mrs. Clinton is a presidential candidate, it remains unclear if the retention of "Hillary" in the foundation's name indicates that Mrs. Clinton will continue to make "contributions" to the foundation and have a "role in shaping" its work. The full name, the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, is still recorded as the official name, appearing in the answer to the first "frequently asked question" provided on the website [emphasis added]:

     While Mrs. Clinton has been removed from the board of directors, it appears from the way the website of the foundation is structured that she is expected to return in the future. Rather than simply delete the page (archived here) that provided Mrs. Clinton's biographical information, the site blocked access; an attempt to access the current page is met with "Access denied":

     A search of the IRS's database of charities indicates the foundation's name is currently still the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The foundation has not responded to multiple requests for comment on the status of the organization's name.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Men Make Up Top 8 Most Highly Compensated Clinton Foundation Employees

    In late February, Hillary Clinton, a self-proclaimed champion of women's rights and gender equity, came under fire for a Washington Free Beacon analysis that showed women on Mrs. Clinton's staff during her tenure in the Senate were paid an average of 72 cents on the dollar compared to male staff. Now, an analysis of the latest IRS filing for the foundation that bears her name, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, shows a similar compensation disparity between men and women employees. Although compensation figures are available for only a limited number of Foundation personnel, the 2013 Form 990 filed with the IRS shows that out of eleven highly compensated individuals listed, the top eight are all men.
    While the Clinton Foundation regularly posts annual reports and financial statements on its website, there is no requirement that the organization list compensation for all employees. The 990 form, however, asks for a list of directors, officers, trustees, and "key employees", as well as the next five most highly compensated employees not in those other categories. For 2013, this list is comprised of twenty-three names, eleven of whom received compensation (members of the board of directors are not paid, except for the chairman, who also serves as CEO.) When sorted by total compensation, the first eight names on the list are men followed by three women below:

    A further analysis of the four most recent 990 filings shows that a "gender gap" among highly compensated employees at the Clinton Foundation has been relatively consistent over time, with the gap actually widening for the years considered in this analysis. The number of women represented in the highly compensated group has seen a decrease over the same time period. The data is summarized below showing the year, the average compensation of the highly compensated men versus that of the highly compensated women, the number of men versus women in the highly compensated group of individuals listed on the 990s, and the percentage on the dollar that those men were paid versus the women:

2010 - $210,000 vs. $149,000 (four men vs. five women) - 71%
2011 - $190,000 vs. $147,000 (five men vs. four women) - 77%
2012 - $257,000 vs. $166,000 (five men vs. three women) - 65%
2013 - $294,000 vs. $185,000 (eight men vs. three women) - 63%

    Again, this analysis does not consider all employees of the Clinton Foundation, but only those required to be listed on the 990. The total pay of the highly compensated employees for 2013 totals only $2.9 million versus total salaries and compensation for all employees of $29 million. Additionally, the following note regarding the presentation of the financial information appears on the website of the Clinton Foundation:

The Clinton Global Initiative was separately incorporated during fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012 at the request of the Obama Administration while Secretary Clinton was in office. As a result, CGI filed separate 990s with the IRS during that time. In 2013, when Secretary Clinton left office, CGI returned to the Clinton Foundation.

However, a review of compensation data for the three years in question for the separate 990s filed for the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) shows that inclusion of that data in the above analysis would have only served to widen the disparities. A detailed analysis combining the data from the CGI 990s with the Clinton Foundation 990s was not conducted.
    For those wishing to get a response from Mrs. Clinton on the apparent gender pay gap at the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation may get their chance sooner rather than later. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to co-host a Foundation webcast live from New York on March 9, 2015, with her daughter Chelsea and Melinda Gates. The webcast is titled Not There Yet: A Data Driven Analysis of Gender Equality. At the event, the No Ceilings initiative will "release the findings of a year's worth of analysis on the gains women and girls have made and the gaps that remain."
    An email to the press contact for the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation seeking comment on the above compensation analysis, as well as a request for further compensation data to broaden the analysis, was not immediately returned.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.