Ex-Bill Clinton aide memo roils wife’s campaign over ethics

“The people around her are well aware of the problem”, co-host Willie Geist said after referring to one email in which longtime senior Clinton aide Huma Abedin wrote “She [Clinton] created this mess and she knows it”.

The same year Bill Clinton pocketed his first $500,000 from GEMS, he also earned a $100,000 fee from Teneo, Band’s firm, according to the Clintons’ financial disclosures.

A set of emails released by DCLeaks this month show the Clinton campaign backed away from her comments on a soda tax in April following angry emails from the company. She complained to others about Band’s company Teneo “hustling” business for themselves at Clinton events.

So, not only did the Clintons use the State Department as a shell to conduct work for their foundation, but the foundation itself was also used as a shell to personally enrich the Clintons. Access to government officials was “leveraged” to bring in money for the foundation and the Clinton family bank account.

The Clinton Foundation appears to have served so many wonderful purposes.

Dow also became a sponsor of the Clinton Global Initiative, a significant fundraising effort, and gave $150,000 to the Clinton Foundation “for President Clinton to attend a Dow dinner in Davos”.

The memo, part of a cache of emails stolen from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, resurfaces an issue that she has had a hard time shaking: questions over the relationship between the Clintons’ charity work and their personal business.

“Morning Joe” bashed the “sleazy” Clinton Foundation on Thursday morning after leaked emails showed what Joe Scarborough described as the Clintons “bragging about being able to shake down foundation clients”. We have comped individuals that fall primarily into the following categories: spouse of CGI employees, government employees, potential donors being cultivated – including target Teneo clients, President Clinton’s family and friends, family and friends of Foundation employees, guest requests of foreign dignitaries, and celebrities.

“You’re shaking down the world for $66 million dollars”, Scarborough added before Brzezinski went on to report latest details of the latest scrutiny the Clintons are receiving as a result of their foundation. “Justin and I convinced them to initiate a relationship to Foundation, which they did; that relationship has grown into a business relationship for President Clinton and a donor relationship for CGI”, Band wrote.

Some of the speeches “secured” by Teneo include two $450,000 addresses delivered to UBS in 2011 and 2012, as well as a commitment for three additional paid speeches, if he chose to give them.

“I was in London Sunday and did a foundation event Sunday evening, and two people separately voiced concerns directly to me about Teneo”, Clinton wrote to John Podesta and other Clinton allies in December 2011. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “The memo removes any doubt that the [Clinton Foundation] is little more than an unregistered super PAC working on the Clintons’ behalf”.

“Does anyone in America believe that Doug Band, Mika, would be doing anything that Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t want Doug Band to do”, Scarborough asked. Band’s firm, Teneo, worked to drum up business for both the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton – or “Bill Clinton, Inc.” in Band’s words – sometimes from the same entities.

Clinton’s campaign has argued, in addition to attacking the Wikileaks exposé as the work of Russian hackers aimed at handing the election to Trump, that there is no evidence that the money influenced any of Hillary Clinton’s policy decisions at the State Department.

The gigs included speeches for companies such as UBS and Barclays, a meeting with the CEO of Coca-Cola at the Clintons’ Washington home, and $18 million to serve as “honorary chancellor” for the for-profit college Laureate International Universities (Hillary Clinton has called for a crackdown on such schools).

“We read about Clinton confidant Doug Band bragging he had funneled tens of millions of dollars to Bill Clinton Inc. through the foundation donations, paid speeches and consulting contracts”. The Foundation paid for airfare, but the loaner plane saved the Foundation $100,000 in travel costs, Band wrote.