New revelations continue to raise serious questions about conflicts of interest at the Clinton Foundation. Some of the most explosive allegations come from Doug Band, Bill Clinton's version of Huma Abedin, while he was caught in a conflict with Chelsea Clinton. And he was accusing Chelsea of being just as dirty as he was.
Chelsea Clinton’s husband used his connections to the Clinton family and their charitable foundation to raise money for his hedge fund, according to an allegation by a longtime Clinton aide made public Sunday in hacked documents released by WikiLeaks.
Marc Mezvinsky extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, and he also relied on a billionaire foundation donor to raise money for the fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents. They also assert that he had his wife Chelsea Clinton make calls to set up meetings with potential investors who support her family’s political and charitable endeavors.
These are more of the Podesta email leaks.
Specifically Doug Band was outraged that Chelsea was accusing him of exploiting the Clinton brand, when she was the one doing it. The trouble with that argument is that Chelsea and her husband were family. And Doug was the guy who helped Bill find his way around. He was an employee. And that's how that ended up.
Doug Band did quite well from his Clinton connections.
In a Jan. 2012 email to Podesta, Mills and current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Band wrote that Mezvinsky invited “several potential investors” for his hedge fund “and a few current business ones” to a foundation poker night fundraiser he had been planning.
“I assume all are contributing to the foundation, which of course isn't the point,” Band wrote. “The entire plan of his has been to use this for his business.”
In the same email, Band — referring to Chelsea Clinton by her initials — wrote that Mezvinsky “has CVC making some calls for him to get mtgs with some clinton people.”
And, in a Nov. 2011 memo released Sunday, Band wrote that major Clinton Foundation donor Marc Lasry was “assisting Marc Mezvinsky – Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky’s husband – in raising money for his new fund.”
Lasry, who also employed Chelsea Clinton as a chemical industry analyst at his own hedge fund Avenue Capital Group from late 2006 until 2008, declined to comment.
So it's no surprise by now that the Clinton Foundation was a clearing house for Clintonian insider dealings. If you're going to have a slush fund, you might as well make the most of it.