Clinton Library Donor List
Released to Committee
In a last-minute compromise February 28, lawyers for the William J. Clinton Foundation handed over a list of the 150 top Clinton Presidential Library donors to Congressional investigators looking for evidence linking donations to presidential pardons. Lawyers for the House Government Reform Committee examined it for about 45 minutes, according to a February 28 Associated Press report, but did not say whether any of the names on the list would prompt further investigation.
Committee Chairman Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) had threatened February 26 to find foundation Director Skip Rutherford in contempt of Congress if he did not respond to a subpoena and provide the names in time for hearings scheduled for March 1. But after several days of negotiations over who would see the list, the committee agreed to protect the privacy of donors not relevant to the probe.
As nonprofit organizations, presidential library foundations are not required to publicize the names of contributors. John Taylor, executive director of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, California, said in the February 25 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Virtually every fund-raising charity will say that donor information is confidential to any extent possible, unless it is the wish of the donors to make it public.”
Posted March 5, 2001.
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