Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has repeatedly criticized the Clinton Foundation for accepting foreign donations, yet she has a larger relationship with its offshoot, the Clinton Global Initiative, than previously reported.

The former Hewlett Packard CEO has addressed reports she spoke at Clinton Global Initiative, or CGI, events on two occasions. However, WND has found that Fiorina currently serves on the boards of two nonprofits that have partnered with CGI.

One of the nonprofit organizations, the National Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, was launched at a CGI event June 14, 2013, and that same year also pledged a two-year, $3.7 million commitment to CGI to foster interest in entrepreneurship.

Fiorina serves on NCEI’s four-member advisory board.

An NCEI press release recounts how the nonprofit was launched at CGI.

“We looked across the country and thought about the places that we could launch, and we loved the CGI model and their notion of making commitments to act,” NCEI’s chief executive, Laurie Westley, told Entrepreneur magazine. “There are very few places where we can do that quite so publicly, with the same kind of affection for new ideas and respect for the actions that it takes to bring them to fruition.”

NCEI’s $3.7 million pledge includes plans to construct an exhibition space at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., celebrating entrepreneurship that is expected to open in 2024.

Fiorina separately serves as chairman of the board of directors of Good360, a consortium of nonprofits with a mission statement that boasts it “transforms lives and strengthens communities by mobilizing companies to donate critically needed goods.” She has been on the board since 2012.

In 2013, Good360 partnered with Hilton Worldwide to back a CGI project called RePurpose, which says it supports “members of the hospitality industry in finding alternative ways to recycle, donate, or reuse waste instead of sending it to the landfill.”

Fiorina’s campaign did not return a request for comment on the two nonprofits’ ties to the Clinton groups.

Fiorina did not mention her role at the two CGI-supporting nonprofits when she appeared on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio show last month to address her associations with CGI.

Fiorina was responding to reports she appeared on a panel with Bill Clinton at a June 23-25, 2014, CGI event in Denver. At that meeting, Fiorina debated Clinton and opposed a plan to hike the minimum wage.

In response to her attendance, she told Hannity that “with regard to the Clinton Global Initiative, yes, I went and spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative on two occasions. On one occasion, I was asked by ‘Meet the Press’ to debate President Clinton on the stage. I was happy to do so.

“And in the second instance, I went to lead a panel on entrepreneurship. I thought it was important to do that, because Democrats are trying to claim that they are the party of small business and entrepreneurship; and every policy they pursue, crushes small business and entrepreneurship, and I thought the audience needed to know the other side of the story.”

Fiorina has repeatedly criticized the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s role as the group that has faced criticism for its acceptance of foreign contributions.

“How can we trust Mrs. Clinton?” Fiorina asked at a May campaign stop in South Carolina. “We now know that her family foundation has had to refile five years’ worth of returns because it failed to disclose donations from foreign governments. We know that she only had one email in her server, that she put a server in her basement, that it was convenient not to rely on federal government emails.”

In her address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Fiorina called on Clinton to “please explain why we should accept that the millions and millions of dollars that have flowed into the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments doesn’t represent a conflict of interest.”

http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/fiorinas-ties-to-clinton-foundation-closer-than-disclosed/