After conducting interviews with numerous donors and staffers connected with the Clinton Foundation, Politico reports that the storm of scandals engulfing the organization has sent it into a “tailspin.”  

Politico spoke with “a dozen donors, staffer and operatives” tied to the foundation who painted a consistent picture of the organization’s panicked state after Peter Schweizer’s bombshell book Clinton Cash exposed a series of questionable donors, special deals, and potentially illegal actions of the $2 billion organization.

“Taken together,” Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel writes,  the accounts “portray an organization scrambling to address concerns about its budgeting, fundraising and donor-vetting while being buffeted by a raging political storm.”

Vogel cites a “handful of deep-pocketed donors” who, “amid mounting questions about how it’s spending their money and suggestions of influence peddling,” are beginning to reconsider their gifts. Vogel quotes one anonymous “major donor” (who gave at least $500,000 just last year) who is now being forced to “reevaluate” his/her relationship with the foundation.

“There are a lot of factors and the reputational is among them,” said the donor. “We had some questions about how the money was being spent — and that was long before the problems were in the press.”

The donor, like the other unnamed “major donors” Politico cites, has been disturbed by the revelations of the foundation’s “sloppy record-keeping and huge payments for travel and administrative costs.”

They say increasing financial pressures and escalating outside scrutiny have sparked sometimes intense internal debates about the priorities and future of a pioneering charitable vehicle that was supposed to cement the family’s legacy.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the “tailspin” Politico notes is the “paradox” of Bill’s vaunted fundraising ability, which appears to be working against the foundation on some levels:

The paradox is that Bill Clinton’s unparalleled fundraising ability — the secret to the foundation’s extraordinary global growth and programmatic successes — is now fueling the very questions and allegations complicating both the foundation’s efforts and his wife’s presidential campaign. Critics — emboldened by frenzied media scrutiny of the Clinton’s personal and charitable finances and a new book on the subject from a conservative author — are alleging without hard evidence that deep-pocketed individuals, companies and foreign governments wrote checks to the foundation or paid speaking fees to the former president to win favorable treatment from Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Read the full report here.