Emails raise questions about ethics
Bill Clinton aide outlined overlap of interests between business, charity
A 2011 confidential memo written by a longtime Bill Clinton aide during Hillary Clinton’s State Department tenure describes overlap between the former President’s business ventures and fundraising for the family’s charities.
The former aide also described free travel and vacations arranged for the Clintons by corporations, reinforcing ethics concerns about the Democratic presidential nominee.
The 13- page memo, by Doug Band, was included in hacked emails from the private account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that were released by WikiLeaks.
Band, describing the former President’s management of “Bill Clinton Inc”, laid out the “unorthodox nature” of how he and other aides navigated between Bill Clinton’s dual interests in seeking out speaking and consulting ventures around the world while he raised funds for the Clinton Foundation.
In the November 2011 memo, Band described “more than US$ 50 million [$ 70.1m] in for- profit activity we have personally helped to secure for President Clinton to date.”
The Clinton Foundation has been among one of the biggest vulnerabilities in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the White House. Clinton calendars and emails released by the State Department showed ongoing coordination among Clinton’s top aides and Bill Clinton’s top aides at the foundation and his private office. Her critics have accused her of providing favours to foundation donors, though there has been no evidence of this. She frequently met privately with people who had ties to the foundation.
Band wrote the memo to lawyers hired by the Clinton Foundation to audit the organisation’s structure and operations. It did not specifically cite ethics concerns, and in a new statement yesterday Band told the Associated Press that his firm, Teneo, “never received any financial benefit or benefit of any kind” for its work for the Clinton Foundation. Band did not elaborate about what gifts Bill Clinton obtained from his speech and consulting clients.
Hillary Clinton met with or spoke to representatives of at least 15 companies and organisations that paid her husband for speaking engagements during her tenure as Secretary of State, according to a review of her planning schedules from the State Department.
Meanwhile, in hacked emails publi shed yesterday, it emerged that months after Hillary Clinton acknowledged she had used a private email server for work messages, a long- time confidante of Podesta lashed out. “Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered?” asked Neera Tanden, president of the pro- Clinton think tank, the Center for American Progress.
Top State Department officials have said no one in the agency provided such permission and they did not become aware until as late as 2014 that she had used a private server to conduct all her government business.
Band’s memo described how he