Hillary Clinton slammed news reports that more than half of the non-governmental people who met with her as secretary of state had donated to her family foundation as "a lot of smoke and there is no fire" and defended the organization's charitable work around the world.
"Look, I know there is a lot of smoke and there is no fire," the Democratic nominee told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday in a telephone interview. It marked Clinton's first media session in nearly a month.
"This excludes nearly 2,000 meetings I had with world leaders," she added, referring to Tuesday's report by The Associated Press. "Other meetings with U.S. government officials when I was secretary of state. A small portion of my time.
"It draws a conclusion and makes a suggestion that my meetings with people like the great Elie Wiesel or the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus were somehow due to connections with the foundation instead of their status as highly respected global leaders."
Wiesel, who died last month, was a Holocaust survivor and writer. Yunus, who lives in Bangladesh, won the Nobel for his work in economics and microfinance in 2006.
"That is absurd," Clinton said of the AP's findings. "These are people I would be proud to meet with, as would any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with, to hear about their work and their insights."
The AP found that 85 of the 154 people representing private interests who had met or talked with Clinton while she headed the State Department had donated as much as $156 million to the foundation.
At least 40 contributed more than $100,000 each, while 20 gave over $1 million, according to the report.
"What we did when I was secretary of state, as I said, went above and beyond anything that was required," Clinton told Cooper. "Anything that any charitable organization has to do.
"Now, obviously, if I am president, there will be some unique circumstances — and that is why the foundation has taken additional steps."
Clinton also ripped Trump as she praised the foundation's efforts.
"You know more about the foundation than you know about anything concerning Donald Trump, his business, his tax returns," she told Cooper. "I think it's remarkable.
"I'm proud of the work my husband started and he did. We provided a massive amount of information.
"And Donald Trump doesn't release his tax returns and is indebted to foreign banks and foreign lenders."
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