ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos disclosed Thursday that he donated $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation from 2013-2014.
The disclosure came after the conservative news website Washington Free Beacon noted that Stephanopoulos hadn’t informed his viewers of the donations:
Thanks @ABC for leaking statement to @DylanByers after @AndrewStilesUSA and @FreeBeacon asked you about Stephanopoulos donation to Clintons
— Matthew Continetti (@continetti) May 14, 2015
Here is the story that would have broken the George Stephanopolous donation if @ABC had any sense of decency: http://t.co/S8zDBhfVXL
— Matthew Continetti (@continetti) May 14, 2015
Stephanopoulos, a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton, apologized for not publicly disclosing the donation sooner in a statement to Politico.
“I made charitable donations to the Foundation in support of the work they’re doing on global AIDS prevention and deforestation, causes I care about deeply,” he said, as quoted by Politico. “I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record. However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the Foundation. I apologize.”
After Stephanopoulos interviewed Peter Schweizer last month on “This Week,” he was criticized for not disclosing either his former employ with the Clintons or, later, his donations to the foundation. Schweizer is the conservative author of “Clinton Cash,” a book billed as an expose of the former first family’s corrupt connections to foreign donors.
Schweizer told Bloomberg Politics in an email Thursday that he was “stunned” by what he saw as Stephanopoulos’ “massive breach of ethical standards.”
“He fairly noted my four months working as a speech writer for George W. Bush,” Schweizer told the news outlet. “But he didn’t disclose this?”
ABC News told Politico that it would not discipline Stephanopoulos for what the network called “an honest mistake.”
This post has been updated.
