Diss-and-tell Bubba Xposé
Bill must have done ex-aide dirty
ET tu, Doug Band? In a stunning political and personal betrayal, Bill Clinton’s erstwhile consigliere has spilled his guts to Vanity Fair. It’s impossible to look away.
“Confessions of a Clintonworld Exile,” by its very existence, proves beyond a doubt that the Clintons have lost whatever waning political capital remained. Consider that, at the height of their powers, Clinton loyalists would sooner go to prison (as Susan McDougal did, 18 months served, eight months of those in solitary) rather than compromise the ever-compromised Clintons.
Bill must have done something very, very bad — worse than his usual self-dealing and pathological deceit — for Band, a surrogate son, to lash out like this.
As the piece opens, we meet the middle-aged Band in his Manhattan office, framed photos of Bill Clinton covering walls, tables — “virtually every surface,” Gabriel Sherman writes, “except for windows.” (There’s always something very “Sunset Boulevard” about the Clintons and their acolytes.)
“Bill Clinton was my life for almost 20 years,” Band says. As we learn, he put up with a lot. To be sure, Band also gained a lot; his role as Clinton’s gatekeeper made him a very wealthy man. In 2018, Band bought a $20 million Manhattan townhouse once owned by David Rockefeller.
When Band wasn’t actively building Clinton’s postpresidential life — helping establish the ethically dubious Clinton Foundation, then exploiting his closeness to Clinton and other world leaders by founding “global consulting” company Teneo — he was busy looking the other way.
Clintonworld remains a fetid swamp, and Band professes regret.
“I don’t want anything to do with that whole world,” he tells VF.
It’s certainly a convenient moment for a public mea culpa, Bill’s legacy especially fragile in the #MeToo era. And it’s not just about the slander and victimization of Monica Lewinsky or the so-called “bimbo eruptions” that never really disappeared.
Now it’s about Clintonworld ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, two monsters whose proximity to Bill — and his equally greedy, hypocritical daughter, Chelsea — can never be explained away.
As Sherman notes, despite Bill’s denials, Band says that Bill spent time on Epstein’s private Caribbean island in January 2003; in 2006, Epstein donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And as VF notes, right before the Big Dog was slated to speak at the DNC on Aug. 18, 2020, a photo surfaced of Bill receiving a shoulder massage from 22-year-old Chauntae Davies, who later accused Epstein of raping her over a four-year period.
As for Chelsea, Band showed Vanity Fair a photo of Bill, Chelsea, Epstein and Maxwell posing together at a royal Moroccan wedding. VF reports that Chelsea invited Maxwell to her 2010 nuptials even after Epstein had pled guilty to procuring sex with a minor.
“Ghislaine had access to yachts and nice homes,” Band explains. “Chelsea needed that.”
Through a spokesperson, Chelsea copped to one trip on a yacht, in 2009, with Maxwell and said that “it wasn’t until 2015 that Chelsea became aware of the horrific allegations against Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Band says he began boxing out Maxwell as early as October 2011. “It made it harder for them to justify being close to her,” Band says.
One might assume this caused the dramatic Clinton-Band fallout, but no. Nor was it the moment that, according to Band, Chelsea demanded he give her and her new husband a stake in his company.
The rift calcified two months later, Sherman writes, when “Band said the unsayable: If Bill Clinton wanted to have girlfriends, he should divorce Hillary and move on with his life.” Of course! The only people relatively unscathed here are Hillary Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin, though Band can’t resist gossiping about Hillary’s seething resentment of Obama during and after the 2008 election.
Not that Band acquits himself well here, with his insistence that there was really no conflict in his multi-tentacled moneymaking schemes. He’s speaking out only because he’s shocked — shocked! — that there’s no honor among thieves.
It’s clear that despite his apostasy, Band’s adult identity and belief system were forged in the crucible of Clintonworld. Whether out of denial or delusion, Band insists that despite betraying Bill so publicly — escaping the cult, as he says — “I have no negative feelings or anger toward him whatsoever.”