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Did corporations and foreign governments make donations to the Clinton Foundation as a way of cozying up to Hillary Clinton? Cherry picking the few occasions when they did so within a few months of some action by Hillary won’t tell us anything. There’s too little signal and too much noise. But there’s a way to attack this question. Since 2000, Hillary Clinton has had five phases in her career:

2001-06: Senator from New York

2007-08: Candidate for president with good chance of winning.

2009-12: Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

2013-14: Retired, giving speeches, no one knew what she would do next.

2015-16: Candidate for president with excellent chance of winning.

So here’s what someone needs to do: Take a look at donations to the Clinton Foundation and see if they seem to align with these career phases. For example, you’d expect foreign governments to be uninterested in gaining favors from Hillary while she was a New York senator, but very interested while she was Secretary of State. Conversely, you might expect, say, the financial industry to be generous while she was a New York senator but not so much while she was Secretary of State. During the periods when she was running for president, you’d expect activity to pick up from everybody, and during 2013-14 you’d expect interest to decline across the board.

You can probably think of other trends you’d expect to see if donations to the Clinton Foundation were widely viewed as a way of getting better access to Hillary. So what you need to do is write down these expectations first, and then crunch the data to see if the evidence supports your hypothesis.

This would be a lot of work. But if you really, truly think the Foundation was basically just a way of buying access to Hillary Clinton, this is a way of getting past anecdotes and looking for real trends. Is anyone willing to do this?