No evidence Clinton aides took required ethics training

The State Department can find no evidence that some of Hillary Clinton’s top aides completed their mandatory ethics training, raising still more questions about whether her team cut corners during their time serving with her in government.

The Republican National Committee had sued to get a look at the records for Mrs. Clinton and nine of her top staffers, including many who have shifted over to work on her presidential campaign. Of those, only three had records showing they completed the training.

The revelation came as Mrs. Clinton and her team face deeper questions about whether she used the department to benefit the Clinton Foundation, an international charity run by her family and close friends.

Seeking to put those questions to rest, the foundation announced Thursday that if Mrs. Clinton wins the White House in November, it will stop accepting donations from foreign governments and corporations, the Associated Press reported.

The six Clinton confidantes at the State Department who lack any record of taking the required ethics training were Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Anne Marie Slaughter, Caitlin Klevorick, Jake Sullivan and Kris Bladerston.

In the case of Ms. Abedin, the department even reminded her of her obligation in early 2013, just before she left the department along with Mrs. Clinton, and she seemed confused, saying she thought filing a financial disclosure form was enough. When told the ethics training was separate and still undone, she said she’d get to it.

There is no record of her following through.

“The State Department’s own regulations say the responsibility for carrying out the agency’s ethics program rests with the secretary, and by all accounts, it was never a priority for Hillary Clinton,” said Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman. “The complete absence of records showing Clinton and her top aides completed annual ethics trainings required by federal law is par for the course for her tenure as secretary of state, where the rules didn’t seem to apply and pay-to-play was the name of the game.”

Ethics training is supposed to brief employees on conflicts of interest and other obligations, such as filing annual disclosure forms and avoiding using their inside knowledge of government for their own financial gain.

Mrs. Clinton and her aides have come under scrutiny recently for communications between the department and the Clinton Foundation, which is run by Mrs. Clinton’s family and close friends.

Ms. Mills, for example, took a trip to New York in 2012, while still serving as chief of staff at the State Department, to do work for the Clinton Foundation, CNN reported. The Clinton campaign said Ms. Mills was volunteering her time.

The Clinton campaign didn’t respond Thursday to a request for comment on the latest revelation, but Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seized on the ethics report, saying it was in line with their portrayal of Mrs. Clinton herself.

“Hillary was planning a criminal enterprise trading government favors for cash. As she focused on personal enrichment, the Middle East went up in flames and ISIS exploded onto the globe,” said Stephen Miller, national policy director for the campaign. “Now, all the people who’ve been paying off Hillary for years are funding her campaign.”

Ethics training at the State Department is required every year someone files a financial disclosure form.

But the department under Mrs. Clinton regularly fell short, according to an inspector general’s report summarizing an Office of Government Ethics investigation. There were backlogs, insufficient staff and a failure to get employees to comply: Less than 70 percent of those required to take the classes fulfilled their obligations.

Indeed, the inspector general said the tracking systems were incomplete.

Three of Mrs. Clinton’s aides on whom the RNC sought records did have evidence that they completed their ethics course. They were Andrew Shapiro, Dennis Cheng and Philippe Reines.