As he has several times recently, Mike Pence repeated a false claim that the Associated Press found that more than half of the individual meetings that she gave while Secretary of State were with major donors to the Clinton Foundation.
While the Associated Press initially tweeted the false claim that “More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation,” they have since admitted it was not true.
The AP’s analysis included just 154 of Clinton’s meetings over two years as Secretary of State. It excluded all of her meetings with domestic and foreign government officials — the vast majority of people a Secretary of State spends time meeting. Given that she in fact had over 1,700 meetings over that time period, fewer that 5 percent of her meetings were actually with Clinton Foundation donors.
AP exec editor says the news agency's tweet about Clinton Foundation story was "sloppy:" https://t.co/FxoBL5aBQH https://t.co/o4e2YxqLkf
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 28, 2016
The August AP story did not allege that any of the meetings were improper, nor did it turn up any shady dealings. Though the AP’s executive editor admitted that the tweet was “sloppy,” the organization did not delete the factually-inaccurate claim until September 8. In a statement, the news service said the tweet “fell short of AP standards.”
Pence also falsely stated that the foundation spends only 10 percent on charitable purposes. Politifact has debunked this notion, as it includes only the foundation’s grants to other charities and completely omits the charity’s own programmatic work. The foundation in fact has spent the vast majority of its funds on promoting global health, empowerment of women, reducing childhood obesity, addressing climate change, and rebuilding Haiti.