Hillary Clinton defends allegations on foundation

She blasted Donald Trump and called his campaign is driven by hate

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said that her work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces, rejecting allegations levelled against her by Republican rival Donald Trump over Clinton Foundation.

"What Trump has said is ridiculous. My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces. I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right. I know there's a lot of smoke, and there's no fire," Clinton told CNN in an interview - her first on the national media in nearly a month.

In her interview, 68-year-old Clinton alleged that Trump is taking a hate movement mainstream.

"Donald Trump has shown us who he is... He is taking a hate movement mainstream. He's brought it into his campaign. He is bringing it to our communities and our country," she said in response to a question.

"Someone who has questioned the citizenship of the first African-American president, who has courted white supremacists, who's been sued for housing discrimination against communities of colour, who has attacked a judge for his Mexican heritage and promised a mass deportation force, is someone who is very much peddling bigotry and prejudice and paranoia," she said.

The former secretary of state also alleged that 70-year-old Trump is changing his stance on immigration.

"He is trying to do a shuffle here. But I think we need to look at the entire context. We need to believe him when he bullies and threatens to throw out every immigrant in the country and changes his position three time in one day," she said.

"No wild political attack by Donald Trump is going to change that. And, in fact, the State Department has said itself that there is no evidence of any kind of impropriety at all," she said.

"Now, I think it's important to recognise that the foundation, which does do life saving work and is so well respected here in our country and around the world, has been doing this work for a number of years.

"Voluntarily disclosing donors, significantly reducing sources of funding even to the point of those funding being involved in providing medication to treat HIV/AIDS, and I think that the announcements that the foundation has made really reflect its desire to continue as much of its important work as possible, but to do it in a way that provides great disclosure," she said.

"It's important to remember, the foundation is a charity. Neither my husband nor I have ever drawn a salary from it. You know more about the foundation than you know about anything concerning Donald Trump's wealth, his business, his tax returns," she argued.

Clinton said the foundation would not accept foreign donations if elected as the president.

"Well what we did when I was secretary of state went above and beyond anything that was required anything that any charitable organisation has to do. Now obviously if I am president there will be some unique circumstances and that's why the foundation has laid out additional, unprecedented steps," she added.