A new cache of hacked e-mails, released Wednesday by WikiLeaks, is shedding new light on how Bill Clinton made millions of dollars while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, and raising questions about whether there may have been conflicts of interest between foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s personal business.
In one 2011 memo written by Doug Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton, Band explains how he worked for years to raise $46 million for the Foundation through the Clinton Global Initiative, while also leveraging his relationships with corporate sponsors to secure lucrative speaking arrangements and consulting gigs for the former president. Band, who wrote the 12-page memo in response to an internal audit being conducted by lawyers for the Clinton Foundation, described the money-making endeavor as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”
Those for-profit activities largely involved “speeches, books, and advisory service engagements” in which Band and his private consulting firm, Teneo, acted as “agents, lawyers, managers, and implementers.” Teneo also negotiated “in-kind services for the President and his family—for personal travel, hospitality, vacation, and the like.” By 2011, Bill Clinton had secured over $50 million in compensation and received an additional $66 million in future contracts, according to the memo. Among the deals were a number of paid speeches to corporations including banks like UBS and Barclays, and an $18 million arrangement to serve as “honorary chancellor” for Laureate International Universities, a for-profit college. Some foundation donors were also clients of Teneo, although there is no evidence of any quid pro quo.
The potential for conflicts of interest rattled some at the Clinton Foundation, as The New York Times notes. In one leaked e-mail, Chelsea Clinton alleged that her father’s aides were making “significant sums of money from my parents personally,” and later hired an outside law firm to review the Foundation’s practices. The audit found that the tangled web of relationships between the Clinton’s personal and philanthropic work might lead some donors to expect a quid pro quo, and suggested that the foundation “ensure that all donors are properly vetted and that no inappropriate quid pro quos are offered to donors in return for contributions.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, Band spun his involvement with the Foundation as a positive. “[A]s the memo demonstrates, Teneo worked to encourage clients, where appropriate, to support the Clinton Foundation because of the good work that it does around the world. It also clearly shows that Teneo never received any financial benefit or benefit of any kind from doing so.” (The Clinton campaign has not authenticated or denied the details of the leaked memo, but has accused the Russian government of hacking Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in a bid to influence the U.S. election in favor of Donald Trump.)
The latest revelations may not impede Hillary Clinton’s glide path to the presidency, but they will likely serve as additional ammo for what’s shaping up to be a tumultuous four years if Clinton wins. Days ago, 50 embattled House Republicans sent a letter to the Department of Justice demanding that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate her relationship to the Foundation when she was secretary of state, and whether she used her official connections for her family’s profit. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up,” House Oversight committee chairman and Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz said Wednesday.
