Clinton did not list charity on Senate disclosure forms

02/27/2007

By John Solomon and Matthew Mosk,
Washington Post
Last update: February 27, 2007


WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have operated a family charity since 2001, but she failed to list it on annual Senate financial disclosure reports on five occasions.

The Ethics in Government Act requires members of Congress to disclose positions they hold with any outside entity, including nonprofit foundations. Hillary Clinton has served her family foundation as treasurer and secretary since it was established in December 2001, but none of her ethics reports since then have disclosed that.

The foundation has enabled the Clintons to write off more than $5 million from their taxable personal income since 2001, while dispensing $1.25 million in charitable contributions over that period.

Clinton's spokesman said her failure to report the family foundation and the senator's position as an officer was an oversight. Her office immediately amended her Senate ethics reports to add that information late Monday after receiving inquiries from the Washington Post.

"The details of the Clintons' charitable family foundation and Senator Clinton's role in it have always been publicly available, but, in an oversight that leaders of both parties have made, it was inadvertently omitted from her Senate filing, which has been corrected," said Hillary Clinton's press secretary, Philippe Reines.

Bill Clinton serves as president of the foundation, and the couple's daughter, Chelsea, is a director. None takes any compensation.

Among the institutions receiving grants from the Clinton Family Foundation were Yale University, where both attended law school; groups named for deceased heads of state in Israel and Jordan; and a charity connected to the Arkansas businessman who helped Hillary Clinton make $100,000 on a commodities trade that stirred controversy a decade ago, Internal Revenue Service reports show.

Hillary Clinton's decision to amend her Senate disclosures comes after several other high-profile politicians came under scrutiny for omitting family foundations from their financial disclosure reports, including former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. They amended their disclosures and were not penalized.

Such charities need only to give 5 percent of proceeds each year to maintain a tax exemption.