Many of the most generous donors to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign are also donors to the Clinton Foundation, undermining the Democratic nominee's argument that the work of her family's charity is wholly unrelated to her political ambitions.
Twenty-seven of the 40 registered lobbyists who have bundled contributions for her campaign have also donated to the Clinton Foundation personally, or the firms for which they work have donated. Many of the lobbyists who did not donate represent clients that have.
Among the other supporters who have bundled $100,000 or more for the Clinton campaign, dubbed "Hillblazers" by her staff, there are many other foundation donors. Half of the first 100 names on the campaign's running list of Hillblazers have given to the Clinton Foundation or are associated with groups that have, with dozens more spread throughout the remaining ranks of bundlers.
Thirteen of the top 20 donors to her 2016 campaign are also donors to the Clinton Foundation. Sixteen of the top 20 donors to her 2008 campaign also gave to the foundation, according to contributor data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Matthew Whitaker, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, said the overlap between donations to Clinton's campaigns and her family's foundation was "significant."
"Not only is it significant, but unfortunately from the AP and other reports, the donors were smart to do it," Whitaker told the Washington Examiner.
He was referring to a review this week of schedules obtained by the Associated Press, which showed that Clinton reserved the majority of her non-governmental meetings for foundation donors while she served as secretary of state.
"It is unprecedented for a secretary of state to have a foundation that donors can utilize in an attempt to receive special access to Clinton and the State Department," Whitaker said.
Clinton dismissed the fierce criticism of the way she treated foundation contributors during her diplomatic tenure, arguing Wednesday evening that she would have met with some of the donors cited in recent reports regardless of whether they supported the charity.
"I know there is a lot of smoke, and there is no fire," Clinton told CNN.
But Whitaker suggested the "cross-over" of donors who wrote checks to both the foundation and Clinton's campaigns stemmed from their expectation that giving to both could curry favor with a former secretary of state and potential future president.
"The political cross-over demonstrates that those who gave to the foundation believed there were political benefits or that they would be treated more favorably by the State Department," he said.
None of the leading 20 campaign donors who fueled Clinton's failed 2008 bid made the list of her top 20 donors in 2016.
Her first presidential campaign was funded largely by Wall Street: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Ernst & Young all wrote checks for Clinton amid the financial crisis in 2008.
Her 2016 campaign has enjoyed the support of more progressive groups among the top organizations vying for her affection, such as the Laborers International Union and the American Federation of Teachers.
One of the only things all those groups have in common is the fact that they all gave to the Clinton Foundation along with their campaign contributions.
The Democratic nominee has long defended her family's philanthropic network by arguing that it operates independently of and without regard to her own politics.
"There is absolutely no connection between anything that I did as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation," Clinton said in July in response to concern over the possibility that charity contributors might have received favorable treatment from the State Department during her tenure.
Clinton's husband sought to insulate her further from the smoldering controversy over potential conflicts of interest, past and future, by announcing last week the foundation's intention to end its acceptance of foreign and corporate donations should Clinton win the White House in November.
The pledge left many critics questioning why the Clinton Foundation would allow such contributions to flow during the intervening weeks, arguing that the change in donor policy was an effective admission that the charity's overseas and corporate revenue streams have always been problematic.
Nine of the Clinton Foundation's top 15 donors are foreign and would presumably end their support of the charity under the proposed changes. Those leading donors include the government of Norway and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, both of which contributed up to $25 million to the organization.
The 40 lobbyists who have bundled for Clinton's campaign have together raised more than $2 million in contributions and have given far more to the Clinton Foundation. Among the 27 who gave to the Clinton Foundation are, for example, Alfred Mottur, a lobbyist for Comcast, and Heather Podesta, a lobbyist for a clean energy company called NextEra Energy.
Both of those lobbyists, associated with donations to both Clinton's political and philanthropic causes, could soon find their clients' interests before Clinton as the Democratic nominee touts her plans to invest billions in universal broadband and clean energy.
Mottur has bundled $67,925 for Clinton and Podesta has bundled $31,150.
Some of the campaign bundlers who also donated to the foundation have already received special treatment from Clinton when she led the State Department.
For example, S. Daniel Abraham, the founder of diet drink SlimFast, has raised more than $100,000 for Clinton's campaign and given up to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
In a batch of emails made public by Judicial Watch this week, Huma Abedin, then Clinton's deputy chief of staff, informed Clinton that Abraham wanted to meet with her personally in 2009. Clinton responded by asking Abedin if her plane could wait so she could accommodate Abraham's request for some face time.
Scrutiny of the connections between the Clinton Foundation, the State Department and donors to Clinton's political campaign is unlikely to fade before November.
Earlier this week, a federal judge ordered the State Department to fast track its review of the roughly 14,900 emails recovered by the FBI from Clinton's private server.
The latest round of revelations about the activities of foundation donors has emerged solely from records Clinton did not include in the original trove of 30,000 emails she provided the administration in late 2014. As more documents emerge, Clinton is poised to face new questions about the overlap between her political dealings and her philanthropic work.
Compounding the criticism of Clinton's donor network has been her refusal to address the allegations directly. The Democratic nominee has not held a press conference in 264 days.