Bill Clinton details Clinton Foundation overhaul if Hillary wins

Former President Bill Clinton announced Monday that he would step down from the foundation bearing his name if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

In an open letter, the former president laid out the changes the Clinton Foundation and related initiatives would undergo should his wife, the Democratic nominee, become president to eliminate “legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest.”

{mosads}Among the changes that will be made should Hillary Clinton take the White House, the foundation will only accept donations from U.S. citizens, permanent residents and U.S.-based independent foundations. Foreign governments and corporations would no longer be able to donate.

The changes come as Clinton continues to face political attacks on the foundation, and on whether such a large outside organization can co-exist while being run by the family of a major public official. The changes were announced on the same day that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called for the foundation to be entirely disbanded, saying it was the “most corrupt enterprise in political history.”

But in announcing the potential changes, Bill Clinton also launched a spirited defense of the foundation’s work across the globe. He noted that broad progress on the environment, education and public health had been made, including millions of people getting access to affordable drugs to fight HIV thanks to the Clinton Health Access Initiative — covering more than half of the adults under treatment today.     

And he dismissed suggestions that the foundation should be shuttered if Hillary Clinton becomes president.

“While my role in that work will change, the work itself should continue because so many people are committed to it and so many more are relying on it,” he wrote.

Bill Clinton announced that he would step down from the foundation’s board and stop fundraising for the organization if his wife is elected. And the foundation will be renamed, from the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation to simply the Clinton Foundation.

Furthermore, he said the foundation would begin transitioning some of its international work — much of which relies on bilateral aid programs from foreign governments — to other organizations that are not government-run.

The Clinton Global Initiative, which Bill Clinton founded in 2005 to gather global leaders from government and the private sector to tackle broad issues, would no longer meet following its September meeting.

The foundation indicated it would be overhauling operations if Hillary Clinton were to become president earlier this month.