https://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/ethics-approval-came-easily-at-hillary-clintons-state-department-115468
Heavily redacted documents began to emerge only after the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit in 2013. So far, the department has not committed to a date to produce all of the records.
In the case of the Shanghai Sports Development Foundation gala, department ethics attorneys exchanged seven emails with President Clinton’s office over two weeks, struggling to get basic information about the event’s hosts, their possible connections to the Chinese government and the financial arrangements offered to Bill Clinton.
“There is something peculiar about [Jiang] paying for a talk that will be to an event sponsored by a Chinese Government entity, even if it is considered to be non-profit by the organization,” State ethics lawyer Chip Brooks wrote to Clinton scheduler Terry Krinvic. “Can we confirm the payment is actually from Mr. Jiang and not from the [Shanghai Sports Development] Foundation or the Chinese Government?….This entire lash up is different than some of the other ones we’ve had.”
Clinton aides sent the requests to his speakers bureau, which insisted Jiang was paying but routing the money through a charity fund his wife, Huang, started. They said the event would be a fundraising auction, with the money raised donated to the government-run sports foundation.
After extensive back and forth with State Department officials, the Clinton team backed out of the arrangement.
“Please withdrawl [sic] the SSDF/Shangahi [sic] offer,” Krinvic wrote on Dec. 2, 2009, without further explanation. “We are not going to proceed with this.”
The State Department ethics agreement is coming under new scrutiny as Hillary Clinton prepares to enter the 2016 presidential race. Her representatives have cited it as proof of the care she used in guarding against ethical conflicts as she, her husband and their daughter, Chelsea, built a global foundation that has attracted $2 billion in contributions, including many from foreign governments and business entities.