They have now been rated 4 stars by Charity Navigator (09/01/2016).

What’s puzzling me as I read your pieces is, I’m not sure how you reach your conclusions. You’ve made it fairly clear that you haven’t figured out how the Clinton Foundation spends its money, so how do you make the leap from simply not knowing to believing they are acting in bad faith?

For instance, you say that a 20-page report (which I couldn’t locate — the report I found is 39 pages) represents the “full extent of the activities conducted… one meeting, one day, four years ago.” How do you know one meeting is the full extent?

And how about the office in the Coachella area that they don’t have. How can you even be sure they don’t have an office? And if they indeed don’t have an office, how do you know that their decision not to have an office was anything other than a prudent commitment to reducing overhead expenses?

It’s clear from reading other sources like the NYT that the Clinton Foundation doesn’t operate like a typical charity:

Much of the essential work takes place in offices — analyzing data, strategizing with governments, developing proposals, negotiating, publicizing, squeezing value from the Clinton name and burnishing it in the process. The Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea Clinton, a former McKinsey & Company consultant who wields substantial influence as the foundation’s vice chairwoman, stressed measurable outcomes when she joined in 2011, and its publications are thick with data about its reach.

Yet even foundation veterans can have trouble encapsulating the mission. They are conveners, facilitators, implementers, catalysts. “We help transform the world’s approach to problems,” said Amitabh Desai, the foundation’s foreign policy director. “That’s how I synthesize it.”

Perhaps the foundation may best be understood by what it is not. For the most part, it is not a grant-making organization like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Its primary mission is not to provide direct humanitarian aid, like CARE or Doctors Without Borders.

[…] Rather, the foundation is a public charity that exploits the star power and connections of its principals to finance its programs year by year. Until 2013, when the foundation began building a modest endowment, it spent nearly every dollar it raised, making it vulnerable to economic swings. Measured by spending — $222.6 million in 2013 — it compares to the American Diabetes Association or the March of Dimes Foundation. - NYT

But if they do different work than other charities, why would you expect their financial statements to look the same as other charities? The fact that you didn’t personally understand their financial structure doesn’t prove that there is some sort of impropriety going on here.

You yourself linked to this NYT article, and yet if one reads the entire article, one gets a much, much better impression of the Clinton Foundation than you give of it. How can we be sure that the NYT is wrong and you are right?

There is a fundamental question which is should a corporation be tax exempt which does not fund or provide a charitable or tax exempt purpose in accordance with its mission?

The IRS says “The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”

Even though the foundation goes about their work in an unusual way, typically by meeting with other charities to plan out ways to help a country or community, it seems to me that its goals can still be described as “relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged” and perhaps “advancement of education or science”. The most important thing, though, is that it’s a nonprofit — meaning the Clintons aren’t skimming money off it. I know you believe that the foundation is corrupt, but what this article is missing is actual evidence.