Ex-Bill Clinton aide 2011 memo released

Document describes overlap between business, fundraising

WASHINGTON — 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 $50 million 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 favors 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 organization’s structure and operations.

It did not specifically cite ethics concerns, and in a new statement Thursday 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.