While Bill Clinton Talks Full Disclosure, Hillary Avoids Her Own Disclosure Problem
— -- Bill Clinton's message to a group of college students at an annual gathering for his foundation's Clinton Global Initiative was simple: "Disclose everything."
But he wasn't talking about the recent controversy over his wife's use of a personal e-mail account when she was secretary of state.
Instead, the former president was defending the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation's haul of high-dollar contributions from foreign governments -- an issue that has also dogged the Clintons in recent weeks.
"My theory about all this is: disclose everything," Clinton said at the gathering in Florida on Saturday night.
Clinton said that donations from countries such as the United Arab Emirates, on the whole, had enabled the foundation to do "a lot more good than harm."
"I'm going to tell you who gave us money and you can make up your mind after that," he said.
Meanwhile, in remarks just minutes before her husband spoke, Hillary Clinton avoided any mention of the e-mail flap swirling around her, instead focusing on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma and previewing a global data project on women and girls.
"Whether it's civil rights, women's rights, or LGBT rights, we are counting on all of you to pave the way," she told the students gathered at the University of Miami.
On the topic of her emails, Hillary Clinton appears to be letting a single tweet do all the talking.
Late Wednesday night, 48 hours after the story first broke in the New York Times, Clinton tweeted that she had asked the State Department to release the emails she sent from her personal account during her four years as secretary of state.
But the State Department says this process will take several months, and meanwhile there are many questions that Hillary Clinton has yet to address. Specifically: Why did she use a personal account in the first place and how to determine whether all business-related emails were indeed turned over.
This was Clinton's second major public opportunity to address the e-mail issue this week. The potential Democratic 2016 presidential contender also steered clear of the controversy while speaking at an Emily's List gathering in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
