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  • 2016-02-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Hillary Clinton Sat on the Monsanto Board? (en)
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  • The Walmart chain of retail stores and the Monsanto agrochemical/agricultural biotechnology corporation are two of America's largest companies, and they're also two of the businesses mostly frequently invoked in public criticism as supposed exemplars of corporate greed, putting profits and growth far ahead of concern for their employees, suppliers, and customers. Due to this public perception, politicians (especially those in the Democratic or populist camps) risk sowing disaffection among their supporters should they evince any significant business ties (whether it be employment, investment, or campaign donations) to such companies. Hence a recent point of criticism about Democratic presidential candidate has been that she does (or did) sit on the board of directors of both Walmart and Monsanto. It is true that thirty years ago Hillary Clinton began a six-year tenure as a member of Walmart's board of director, an aspect of her past that Ms. Clinton has largely avoided mentioning on the campaign trail: However, since at least October 2014 rumors have claimed that Hillary Clinton once sat (or currently sits) on the board of directors of agribusiness giant Monsanto as well, despite the lack of any evidence documenting such a connection. The repetition of those rumors increased as the primary elections of the 2016 presidential campaign drew nearer: As evidenced in the examples embedded above, many of those repeating the claim about Hillary Clinton on social media didn't appear to be familiar with its detail, and dates of Clinton's purported tenure on Monsanto's board were never (or rarely) included in iterations of the rumor. Oftentimes social media users who debunked the rumor attributed it to supporters of Bernie Sanders, though we were unable to specifically pin the claim to any source linked with Sanders' campaign (especially given that versions of it appeared on Twitter in 2012 and 2013, well before either candidate entered the 2016 presidential fray). Nonetheless, many shares of the rumor on social media indeed originated with individuals asserting that Sanders was the preferable candidate for lacking the big business ties that Clinton (supposedly) had courted: That said, there are some indirect connections between Hillary Clinton and Monsanto that might have inspired such rumors. The Rose Law Firm for whom Hillary Clinton worked in Arkansas from 1977 through the 1980s reportedly handled some business for Monsanto, but we found no evidence that HIllary Clinton herself was involved in such work. She has also spoken supportively of the biotech industry in general (not Monsanto specifically), as she did at the 2014 Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) conference in San Diego: The Monsanto Company is also listed among the entities who have donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit corporation established by former President Bill Clinton to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. Additionally, some sources have posited that the rumor arose from a connection between the Clinton campaign and Jerry Crawford, an Iowa lawyer and Democratic party leader. Crawford worked on Hillary Clinton ́s 2016 campaign in Iowa and is often described as a Monsanto lobbyist: Crawford was profiled as a Clinton asset in Iowa in early 2015, but he began working on her Iowa campaign back in 2014. Crawford was also named as Midwest co-chair of the 2008 Clinton campaign [PDF]. It's possible that Crawford's lobbying connections were conflated with Hillary Clinton's, and/or that Clinton's tenure on Walmart's board of directors led to a franken-rumor that she also served on the board of Monsanto. But despite the rumor's proliferation across social media, there's no truth to the claim that Hillary Clinton sat on Monsanto's board of directors at any point during her career. Moreover, we found no direct ties between Hillary Clinton and the agribusiness firm in regards to political fundraising. Apart from working with Crawford (whose firm has also provided services for Monsanto), Clinton has no obvious ties to the Monsanto corporation. (en)
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