Bloomberg host John Heilemann said Friday that new revelations about the Clinton Foundation are causing concern among those close to Hillary Clinton, who thought controversy surrounding the political charity had finally subsided.
“This story coming back has a lot of people nervous, because it’s something a lot of folks who are around her thought was behind them, and now it’s back again,” Heilemann said.
ABC News reported Friday morning that Bill Clinton asked the State Department for approval to give lucrative speeches in two of the world’s poorest and most brutal regimes, Congo and North Korea.
The former president has made over $100 million from speeches since leaving office in 2001, sometimes from foreign government and business interests.
Some of his most lucrative speeches were delivered while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, a fact which has raised questions about whether organizations sought to influence State Department policy by paying the Clintons.
Heilemann noted that this intriguing discovery about Bill Clinton, and concurrent discoveries about Clinton aide Huma Abedin, were drawing attention away from Hillary Clinton’s burgeoning email scandal.
“For the past few weeks, the political world has been fixated on Hillary Clinton’s emails, but now two stories have changed the subject—and not in a good way,” Heilemann said.
