WASHINGTON -- The State Department hasn't seen evidence that decisions made by Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was secretary of state were influenced by donations to her family's foundation or speaking fees to her husband, a department spokesman said.
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"We are not aware of any evidence that actions taken by Secretary Clinton were influenced by donations to the Clinton Foundation or speech or honoraria of former President Clinton," the spokesman, Jeff Rathke, said Monday in Washington.
"Over the course of Secretary Clinton's tenure, the State Department received requests to review dozens of entities each year, primarily for proposed speeches" by former President Bill Clinton, and "we are aware of no evidence that there was undue influence."
The State Department's comment came in response to assertions that Hillary Clinton may have been influenced by donations to her family's foundation while she served as the nation's top diplomat. The accusations, included in a new book, surfaced after she announced her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Rathke provided no information about what, if any, formal review the State Department conducted beyond disclosures that were submitted by Clinton under an agreement to do so when she led the department.
"I don't have a systematic or an organizational effort to outline for you," he said. Rathke said he will seek further details.
"We've looked at the reports that have been out there publicly, and we don't have any evidence, any internal evidence, to suggest that there was that kind of influence," he said.
When Clinton became secretary of state in President Barack Obama's first term, she signed a letter committing "not to participate personally and substantially in matters where the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Initiative were specific parties," Rathke said.
She also signed a memorandum of understanding in which her family's foundation agreed to publish annually the names of new contributors and to "submit information to the State Department about foreign government donations," Rathke said.
"A review of private-firm donations was outside the scope" of the agreement, he said.
Bill Clinton's attorney signed a separate letter agreeing to provide the State Department with the names of people or entities for whom the former president provided consulting services, Rathke said.
The memorandum of understanding "was set up to avoid potential conflicts and appearances of potential conflict between the duties of the secretary of state and the activities of the foundation of President Clinton," Rathke said.
While aware of reports that the foundation failed to publish names of some new contributors, "We welcome the new commitments from the Clinton Foundation to disclose the donors," Rathke said.
Speaking fees
In an interview with NBC News broadcast Monday, Bill Clinton defended his speaking fees, which are often hundreds of thousands of dollars, and denied any conflicts of interest.
When asked if he would continue to collect fees for speeches during his wife's presidential bid, he said: "Oh, yeah. I gotta pay our bills."
He and his wife have both contributed more than 10 percent of their earnings from speeches to their family foundation, he said.
He also said it would be difficult for him to have an ordinary business relationship with many companies because it would make them targets. He said he has turned down speeches he worried might be inappropriate.
"I work hard at this," Clinton said. "I spend a couple hours each day doing the research. People like to hear me speak. And I have turned down a lot of them. If I think there is something wrong with them, I don't take it."
The speaking fees -- a Washington Post analysis found Bill Clinton made $104.9 million in speaking fees from when he left the White House in 2001 to when Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013 -- have come under scrutiny since his wife declared her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination last month.
Bill Clinton said he didn't know if he would step down from the foundation if she were to win the White House.
"I'll decide -- if it's the right thing to do, I will," he said.
Criticism over his family foundation's donations from foreign governments is politically motivated, and there is no evidence to support suggestions that the gifts influenced Hillary Clinton's behavior as secretary of state, the former president said in the interview.
"I asked Hillary about this and she said, you know, no one has ever tried to influence me by helping you," Bill Clinton said. "No one has even suggested they have a shred of evidence to that effect."
There has been a "deliberate attempt to take the foundation down," Clinton said. But he doesn't believe there was "anything sinister in trying to get wealthy people in countries that are seriously involved in development to spend their money wisely in a way that helps poor people and lifts them up." He added that the foundation had never done anything "knowingly inappropriate."
Bill Clinton said 90 percent of donors give $100 or less. But over half of the donors giving $5 million or more are foreign, including foreign governments. Under pressure, the foundation recently announced it will only take money from six Western countries.
Bill Clinton said the policy change "absolutely" didn't suggest that it was inappropriate to have accepted millions from nations such as Saudi Arabia.
"It's an acknowledgment that we're going to come as close as we can during her presidential campaign to following the rules we followed when she became secretary of state," he said.
Bill Clinton is on a nine-day trip in Africa with his daughter, Chelsea, visiting foundation programs in Tanzania, where it helps fund a vaccination center, and Liberia, where it assists the government in fighting HIV/AIDS.
Republican presidential candidates have criticized the foundation's gifts, with Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, calling the contributions "thinly veiled bribes" in an interview with Politico late last month.
"The normal Clinton response is to cover up, deny, refuse to acknowledge," Paul said. "But the question is whether the country will rise up and respond to the unseemly nature of accepting foreign donations."
Republican Carly Fiorina, a former technology CEO who announced her presidential candidacy Monday, said: "Bill Clinton is saying what Hillary Clinton has said on many occasions: just trust us, just trust us. And unfortunately trust is earned through transparency, and I think they have not been particularly transparent on a whole host of things."
The Republican organization America Rising released a video online that uses footage of Clinton's confirmation hearings for secretary of state to raise questions about her integrity. The video uses 2009 footage of Clinton saying "there is not an inherent conflict of interest in any of my husband's work at all," juxtaposed with a list of foreign countries that have donated to the foundation.
The Clinton Foundation focuses on such issues as economic empowerment, education, environment and energy, health systems and nutrition, according to its website.
Information for this article was contributed by David Lerman and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News and by Matthew Lee and Lisa Lerer of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/05/2015