As a longtime Bill Clinton adviser came under fire several years ago for alleged conflicts of interest involving a private consulting firm and the Clinton Foundation, he mounted an audacious defense: Bill Clinton’s doing it, too. …
“How then do we go through an exercise like this and [Bill Clinton] doesn’t as he is far more conflicted every single day in what he does? Why not apply the structure you set up for him to this situation?” [Douglas] Band wrote…
The Big Dog may come to regret his choice of bagman.
When top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band wrote the memo, he was a central player at the Clinton Foundation…
In doing so, Band also detailed a circle of enrichment in which he raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president.
[emphasis added]
With Utah Congress-thing Jason Chaffetz promising years of investigation into our next president, the Washington Post offers us a preview of what he lip-smackingly describes as “a target-rich environment”.
The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.” …
Band wrote that Teneo partners had raised in excess of $8 million for the foundation and $3 million in paid speaking fees for Bill Clinton. He said he had secured contracts for the former president that would pay out $66 million over the subsequent nine years if the deals remained in place. …
Another achievement cited by Band: Laureate International Universities, a chain of for-profit international colleges, which donated to the foundation and agreed to pay Bill Clinton $3.5 million a year to serve as honorary chancellor.
[emphasis added]
You may remember that famous FOH Huma Abedin received a waiver to work at Teneo while still a high-level aide to Secretary of State Clinton – after Teneo asked her to help secure a presidential appointment for Teneo client Judith Rodin.
While there’s no evidence that Abedin cooperated with this request, one wonders:
Abedin, a longtime key aide and official staff for a Secretary of State, got a sweet deal in which she could collect two paychecks — one from American taxpayers, and the other from a politically-connected firm that wanted to get White House appointments. It’s absurd to believe that Abedin had value to Teneo as anything other than a conduit to Hillary Clinton and an entrée to the Obama administration. Even if no laws got broken, and that’s still far from clear, the arrangement stinks to high heaven.
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/24/more-ethics-issues-for-huma-abedin/
The Band memo can be read here:
http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000158-048f-da25-a55e-efaf30b60000
And what have the principals to say about all this?
Spokesmen for Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton and the foundation declined to comment.
Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin declined to comment on the memo, calling the material “hacked by the Russian government and weaponized by WikiLeaks.” Caplin declined to authenticate the memo, but he also did not dispute it.
