The Clintons’ ethics test: Government watchdogs weigh in on the Clinton Foundation’s latest maneuvers; Salon, 8/23/16

Simon Maloy, Salon; The Clintons’ ethics test: Government watchdogs weigh in on the Clinton Foundation’s latest maneuvers:

"What has to happen, given that history, is that a Clinton administration’s dealings with people and entities linked to the Clinton Foundation would have to be handled with a high level of transparency. Per Holman, the Office of Government Ethics “could easily run through the donor lists to the foundation, identify the potential conflicts of interests of any administration actions and require, or ask for, full disclosure of the process.” POGO’s Amey noted that there are existing safeguards protecting against ethical breaches by government officials – recusal processes, mandatory divestments, etc – and those will have to be enforced to the highest degree. “We need to make sure that we go as far as we can with those initiatives,” says Amey, “to make sure that the White House is as clean as possible.”

So while it’s certainly welcome that the Clintons have taken steps to safeguard against further conflicts of interest through the Clinton Foundation, there’s still quite a backlog of donor history that can still cause them ethical trouble (to say nothing of the fact that the foundation will apparently continue taking foreign money up to the point that Hillary wins election). How much political damage they absorb from that will be determined largely by how transparent a future Clinton administration is willing to be."