A $100,000 donation given to a New York Times charity campaign in 2008 by Bill and Hillary Clinton’s family foundation is not included in a Times list of large gifts from various other foundations, such as George Soros’s charitable foundation.
The Clintons at the 1993 Renaissance Weekend®
AP / Mark Lennihan
Each year, the newspaper publishes a list of trust and estate gifts of $100,000 or more that are invested in an endowment, the income of which is used to fund the following year’s Neediest Cases campaign. When asked about the omission of the Clintons’ gift from the 2008-2009 list, New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said that “most likely” the Clintons requested that the money go towards that year’s campaign and not the endowment, but there is “no record” of why the funds were used that way.
The Washington Free Beacon first broke news of the Clintons’ donation based on the Clinton Family Foundation’s 990 filing for 2008, the same year the Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. The Times later revealed to Buzzfeed that the July 2008 gift was actually a reissue of a misdirected June 2007 check that never reached the Times.
On March 1, 2009, the Times published a list of gifts from “trusts and estates” of $100,000 or greater that the Times said were added to an endowment that benefits the Neediest Cases program. The Clinton Family Foundation gift does not appear on that list. Although the Clinton Family Foundation is a 501(c)(3) private foundation and not a trust or estate, gifts from other similarly IRS-classified foundations, such as the Soros Fund Charitable Foundation, are nevertheless listed.