Clinton camp pushes back at Clinton Foundation reports

The Hillary Clinton campaign is pushing back against reports that raise questions of overlap between donors at the State Department and her time as secretary of State, by saying there is nothing wrong and the media has been “cherry picking” data.

Chief strategist Joel Benenson appeared on CNN’s New Day Wednesday morning to push back on an Associated Press report. The story found that out of 154 people from private interests whom Clinton was scheduled to speak with as secretary of State, 85 had also donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Benenson said the Associated Press didn't use all of the information to tell their story. (The AP has said the analysis was done of the calendars released so far.)

“They've took a small sliver of her tenure as secretary of State, less than half the time, less than a fraction of the meetings she was in, Benenson said. “This is a woman who met with over 1,700 world leaders, countless other government officials, public officials in the United States. And they've looked at 185 meetings and tried to draw a conclusion from that.”

“What I know is that people donated to this Foundation because of the work the Foundation was doing around the world. No one is contesting that,” Benenson continued. “So is it wrong for a secretary of State to meet with people who are committed to causes of saving lives around the world? When the Department of State is doing that same work? I don't think so.”

And on Tuesday, spokesman Brian Fallon released a statement saying the story relied on “utterly flawed data.”

"Just taking the subset of meetings arbitrarily selected by the AP, it is outrageous to misrepresent Secretary Clinton's basis for meeting with these individuals," Fallon said. "Melinda Gates is a world-renowned philanthropist whose foundation works to address global health crises and eradicate disease in the developing world. Meeting with someone like Melinda Gates is squarely in the purview of America's top diplomat, whose job involves confronting these same global challenges."