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FACT CHECK: What Casey Michel Didn’t Tell You About the Clinton Foundation in The New York Times


By Clinton Foundation Staff

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a piece full of recycled and consistently debunked right-wing attacks on the Clinton Foundation. The piece by Casey Michel makes claims about foreign donations to the Foundation that are flat-out false. Here are the facts.

  • The Clintons have never received any salary or financial benefit from the Foundation. On the contrary, they have devoted their own time and resources to it for the same reason that more than 300,000 other contributors have: because of its proven record of impact.

  • Since 2001, contributions to the Clinton Foundation have supported life changing work around across the United States and around the world – including the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) which has given millions of people access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment; the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) which has helped launch thousands of commitments serving more than 500 million people in 180 countries; the Alliance for a Healthier Generation which has helped more than 31 million students get access to healthier meals and exercise options in schools; civic education and cultural programming through the Clinton Presidential Center; and more.

  • Michel’s claim that donations to the Foundation “cratered” after 2016 are a gross misrepresentation of knowable, publicly available facts. In 2016 the Foundation made several changes to avoid any conflicts of interest, should Hillary Clinton be elected president. In these previously announced moves, CHAI spun off into a fully independent entity and stopped consolidating financial statements with the Foundation, and CGI ended its annual meeting.

  • These donations didn’t “dry up” – in fact they continue to support CHAI’s lifesaving work on HIV/AIDS, and have enabled CHAI to include tackling malaria, tuberculosis, and more. CGI has also brought back its annual meeting post-COVID, in response to a continued need for collaborative space to make commitments.

  • Virtually all modern presidential foundations, as well as major American institutions such as hospitals, universities and other charities receive philanthropic support from foreign governments. As those who devote themselves to international development will tell you, this work depends on working with foreign governments – whether to add capacity they don’t have themselves, or as part of a shared interest in tackling problems that impact us all.

  • The Clinton Foundation has endured unprecedented scrutiny including the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans spending millions of taxpayer dollars on years of investigations. It was no surprise to us that those investigations found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Our work is recognized with high ratings from independent charity evaluators, including four stars by Charity Navigator, a platinum rating from GuideStar, and a “top rated” label from Charity Watch.

Michel neglects to mention any of this information, nor the Foundation’s work and impact for nearly two and a half decades. This charitable work may not matter to him, but it certainly does to millions of people around the globe.

It is absurd to equate a philanthropy that has saved millions of lives with an administration intent on making it harder for nonprofits to help people. At a time when the social sector is facing drastic aid cuts, threats to revoke non-profit status, and proposed tax changes, this type of recycled, debunked attack is disingenuous and dangerous to a sector that millions of people depend on to fill gaps in what the government and private sector can provide.