The Clinton Foundation has decided to eliminate the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), the networking platform for the charity. The foundation filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the New York Department of Labor.
The foundation will lay off 22 employees and shut down its New York main office. The process began in September as the charity continued to lose foreign donations, “signaling the organization’s clout was predicated on donor access to the Clintons, rather than its philanthropic work.”
The WARN Act “offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs. This notice must be provided to either affected workers or their representatives (e.g., a labor union); to the State dislocated worker unit; and to the appropriate unit of local government.”
The Observer notes that the foundation established CGI in 2005:
Both the initiative’s mission and its own definition of what it seeks to accomplish are vague. “Rather than directly implementing projects, CGI facilitates action by helping members connect, collaborate, and make effective and measurable Commitments to Action—plans for addressing significant global challenges,” states the CGI website. The Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation director of media relations have not responded to requests for a comment.
The Clinton Foundation came under fire during the election when Wikileaks published emails obtained from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. For instance, Hillary quickly named German Chancellor Angela Merkel as her favorite world leader. It turns out the German taxpayers donated $5 million to the foundation, which the government insisted went to planting trees in India, Mexico, and Vietnam. But now those donations no longer exist.
The New York Post reported that the foundation only received $108 million in contributions, down 37% “from $172 million in 2014. Samsung and ExxonMobil did not participate in the foundation’s annual conference in September 2015.
In one email, Doug Band, president Bill Clinton’s personal assistant in the 1990s and founder of Teneo, claimed that Chelseas Clinton used money from the foundation to pay for her lavish wedding among other things. Apparently Chelsea wanted to start an internal investigation into the foundation and CGI. In order to protect himself, Band pieced together an 11-page memo that detailed the ways President Clinton used to foundation for personal profit.
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