Van Jones on Clinton Foundation Emails: ‘Nothingburger’— ‘How Does This Destroy America?’

Friday on CNN’s “Wolf,” while commenting on reports about new email exchanges raising questions about whether Clinton Foundation donors got preferential treatment from Hillary Clinton’s State Department, former Obama administration Green Jobs Czar Van Jones said this is all a big “nothingburger” and asked, “How does this destroy America?”

Jones said, “I have been tougher on Hillary Clinton than most Democrats and I got flack for that. And I will continue to be tough on her when I think it’s wrong. This, I don’t get. I really don’t get this. It’s impossible to imagine what could, what bad thing can happen if a government official helps a charity hire a good person. It’s what we often want a big official to do. You love it when the mayor or deputy mayor sits on the advisory committee and helps out. Suddenly anything that involves the Clinton Foundation is a scandal, even a nothing like this.

He continued, “When you are in public life, if you are a government official, you often volunteer, you do charitable stuff. The fact that her chief of staff, not her, it’s not like she is going over and making the hires. I don’t think that people are being honest about how these networks work. You know a bunch of people, you work together, you are on this committee together and that committee together, you go golfing. Whatever. So you, somebody picks up the phone and says, ‘hey, listen, we have to make a hire, you are smart.’ How does this destroy America because somebody helps somebody hire?”

‘This one, it’s just a staffer that helps to hire somebody, it’s much to do about nothing and it’s trying to drive a narrative that the Clinton Foundation is a scandal prone thing. There’s a lot of people alive in the world today because the Clinton Foundation helped on AIDS and water. And I just think sometimes it’s much to do about nothing.”

He added, “A lot of stuff, you whip it up and whip it up and you look at it and it’s a big nothingburger.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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