WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton defended her family's charitable foundation Wednesday, calling an Associated Press report about meetings involving donors “absurd” and “a lot of smoke, no fire.”

Clinton said in an interview with CNN that the AP report “looked at a small portion of my time” as secretary of state and drew the conclusion that her meetings with Nobel Prize winners were connected to the foundation rather than their work as global leaders.

“That is absurd,” she said.

An AP report Tuesday found that 85 of 154 non-government officials who met with Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money to the Clinton Foundation. Combined, the donors contributed as much as $156 million to the charity. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

The 154 did not include federal employees or foreign government representatives. Clinton met with representatives of at least 16 foreign governments that donated as much as $170 million to the Clinton charity, but they were not included in AP's calculations because such meetings would presumably have been part of her diplomatic duties.

Clinton's campaign said the AP analysis was flawed because it did not include in its calculations meetings with foreign diplomats or U.S. government officials, and the meetings AP examined covered only the first half of Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that he's proud of people who donated to the foundation and the work the organization has done, as he waded into a dispute that Republicans are hoping will damage his wife's presidential campaign.

The meetings between Clinton, now the Democratic nominee, and foundation donors don't appear to violate legal agreements both Clintons signed before she joined the State Department in 2009.

State Department officials have said they are unaware of any agency actions influenced by the foundation.

“We're trying to do good things,” Bill Clinton said. “If there's something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don't know what it is. The people who gave the money knew exactly what they were doing. I have nothing to say about it except that I'm really proud. I'm proud of what they've done.”

He also defended Hillary Clinton's contact with donors to the foundation while serving as secretary of state, saying foundation donors like Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus have no trouble reaching officials around the world.

Yet the frequency of the overlaps shows the mixing of access and donations. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has criticized the links between the foundation and the State Department, accusing the Clintons of establishing “a business to profit from public office.”

Bill Clinton said changes at the foundation are needed if Hillary Clinton becomes president that weren't necessary when she led the State Department. The foundation won't accept foreign donations, and he will stop raising money for the foundation, he said.

“We'll have to do more than when she was secretary of state, because if you make a mistake there's always appeal to the White House if you're secretary of state,” Clinton said. “If you're president, you can't.”

Bill Clinton said Wednesday that the foundation has begun looking for partners to take over some of its work in preparation for that outcome. That type of transition “takes a reasonable amount of time,” he said.

“You have to do it in a way that no one loses their job, no one loses their income and no one loses their life,” he said. “That's all I'm concerned about. We'll do it as fast as we can.”

Bill Clinton said earlier that the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York will be the final gathering. The meeting is scheduled Sept. 19-21, one week before his wife's first presidential debate.