Trump Calls for Clinton Foundation to Return ‘$25 Million Plus’ Donated by Saudi Government

By Dustin Siggins Published on June 14, 2016

Presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is urging Hillary Clinton to return donations from Saudi Arabia to the Clinton Foundation.

“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote on Facebook one day after a suspected Muslim terrorist allegedly killed 49 people and wounded 50 more in a gay bar in Orlando, Florida. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

The post was Trump’s second on the topic yesterday. His original post said, “Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate. I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

In a speech about the Orlando shooting, which is the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, Clinton said, “For starters, it is long past time for the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis and others to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations.”

Founded by Clinton’s husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and renamed in 2013 to include the former Secretary of State and their daughter Chelsea, the Foundation has disclosed that the Saudi government donated between $10 million and $25 million, according to The Washington Post.

Saudi Arabia did not donate to the Foundation while Clinton was Secretary of State, though seven other nations did. Clinton’s erstwhile primary opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, told CNN’s Jake Tapper last week that donations from Saudi Arabia and other nations represent a possible conflict of interest if Clinton wins the White House later this year.

Donor issues have dogged Clinton for months. Last year, the International Business Times reported that while Clinton headed the State Department, it “authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration.”

It was also reported last week that a top Clinton campaign donor was placed on a high-level State Department intelligence board. Rajiv Fernando also donated at least one million dollars to the Foundation, according to CNN, something else highlighted in a recent speech by Trump.

The Clinton campaign, however, said in response that, “This was an unpaid, volunteer advisory board, and one of several foreign policy-focused organizations that he was involved with. As the State Department itself has said, the ISAB charter calls for a diverse set of experiences for its members. That’s all there is to it.”

A spokesperson for the intelligence board, which requires top-level security clearance to be on and focuses on nuclear weapons, told ABC News in 2011, “As President and CEO of Chopper Trading, Mr. Fernando brought a unique perspective to ISAB. He has years of experience in the private sector in implementing sophisticated risk management tools, information technology and international finance.”

It is not clear whether Clinton was directly involved with Fernando’s appointment. ABC reported that former Secretary of State Chief of Staff Cindy Mills may have recommended him for the board. E-mails and statements released by the State Department and cited by CNN and ABC show confusion as to whether Fernando was qualified to be on the board.

The liberal media watchdog site Media Matters, whose president David Brock is a Clinton backer, cited several examples of Fernando’s high-level involvement in national security affairs, and reported that at least one current member of the board has declared Fernando’s background in cyber security “is a great asset to our national security.”

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