Tag: John Podesta

Executive Summary: Hillary and Bill Clinton have used their charity to collect funds from government and corporate services in exchange for political favors. The direct evidence of how the transactions occurred or what was given has not been fully explored. What we do know is that three governments have given to the Clinton Foundation Endowment without any specified goal. Those countries are Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the UAE. Qatar donated to the Cinton Global Initiative with no purpose specified for the money. Beyond these countries, we know from the emails that the Clinton’s knew their foundation was at risk of being exposed. When Chelsea Clinton was put on the board, she immediately began to sniff out the corruption. Her concerns really annoyed the Foundation Staff. She believed her parents were being duped and not complicit in the acts. They restructured the charity at the end of 2011 to hide their wrong-doings and two long-time Clinton aides founded a private company called Teneo Holdings. Which served as the legal method for the Clinton’s to continue their wrong doing. So far, I have been able to discover evidence from the Podesta emails that they colluded with the United Nations Development Programme to give $100M from the SIDS fund to GE, under the guise of a “contest” in 2011-2012. There is also detailed plans about using the energy-related branch of the Clinton Foundation (Clinton Climate Initiative) to create a source of income for the Clintons, especially once Hillary left the State Department and they could make deals directly with foreign governments.

Acronyms:

• CGI – Clinton Global Initiative

• CCI – Clinton Climate Initiative

• CESC- Clinton Executive Services Corp

• CF- Clinton Foundation

• CHAI – Clinton Health Access Initiative

Major Players besides the Clintons:

• Douglas Band – long-time personal assistant to Bill Clinton. Band started his role while Bill was in office and stayed with him to help establish the Clinton Foundation. He is the creator of the Clinton Global Initiative, which allowed the Clinton’s to accept foreign aid. Band left his role at the Clinton Foundation to form the company Teneo holdings (with Declan Kelly), but retained his CF role as an “advisor”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Band

• Declan Kelly – A “leading advisor” and top fundraiser to the Hillary Clinton 2008 election campaign. He was rewarded for his efforts by being appointed to the role of Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland. He would leave that position to found the Teneo Holding company with Douglas Band. Many political blogs say that his time at the state department was entirely spent travelling the country and making business connections. He is also reported to have gone to Northern Ireland after being appointed and telling the Enterprise minister that his role was “strictly economical, and not political”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declan_Kelly_(businessperson)

• Ira Magaziner – A part of the Clinton Presidential administration, he worked directly with Hillary Clinton to create the failed Task Force for Health Care Reform. In 1997 he was fined for having used the money to pay for non-government employees. The fine was dismissed in court in 1999. He went to work for the Clinton Foundation after they left office, and currently serves as CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). Additionally, (and most importantly) he is involved with CCI in their various renewable energy projects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Magaziner

• Huma Abedin – Personal aide to Hillary Clinton since 1996. Huma simultaneously as deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State, a paid Clinton Foundation executive, and a consultant for Teneo. A special government employee arrangement was created by Hillary Clinton to allow Huma’s outside employment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huma_Abedin#State_Department.2C_Clinton_Foundation.2C_Teneo.2C_2009.E2.80.932013

• Cheryl Mills – A long-time Clinton lawyer, and the one who defended Bill during his impeachment trial. She was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff for her entire tenure as Secretary of State.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheryl_Mills

• Ilya Aspis – special assistant to Bill Clinton at the Clinton Foundation.

Timeline:

• Prior to 2011, the Clintons were using the charity without scrutiny for personal profit

• At some point there was pressure applied to the Clinton Foundation, I did find an email where they were leaked (ahead of time) an incoming inquiry by the State Department. Unfortunately, I misplaced the link to that email, but it is in there somewhere.

• Simpson Thacher and & Bartlett (a law firm) audited the foundation to see if they had exposure; they found evidence of conflicts-of-interest

• Cheryl Mills, John Podesta, and Douglas Band all worked together to restructure the Clinton Foundation in a way that would allow them to continue their practices.

• Enter Teneo. In the re-structuring document, the role of Teneo is described as a way for Bill Clinton to maintain his consulting role

• In 2011, Chelsea was appointed to the Clinton Foundation board and immediately began hearing reports of corruption with Teneo

• She voiced these concerns to her father and mother. They referred her to Cheryl Mills, while she worked at the state department secretary as chief counsel.

• In Late 2011 and 2012, Ira Magaziner spear-headed an effort to work with the UN to pay GE 100M for instituting an island energy initiative. The entire cost for the Clinton Foundation was supposedly subsidized by the UN. Additionally, Ira used the opportunity to personally enrich himself and his co-workers.

• In Ira’s energy documents he discusses how the firm has created solar parks in India and South Africa with the aid of various banking institutes. Oddly, these are not mentioned on the CCI website and there is an email where the CF staff seems to be concerned about the CF role in Gujurat’s (India) solar park.

Companies Involved with Teneo at the very beginning who were also donors to the Clinton Foundation:

-The Coca-Cola Company-

-The Dow Chemical Company

-UBS

-The American Ireland Fund (AIF)

-The All-State Corporation

-Barclays Capital

-Indo Gold

-GEMS Education

-The Rockefeller Foundation

-Laureate International Universities

These are the companies who did not contribute to CF, but were Teneo client’s at its very beginning:

ATT

Black Diamond

Bank of America

Firebird

Liberty Mutual

Stone Harbor

Frank Stronach

TiVo

UBS AG

Mylan

The Email Proof

This is an email where they discuss the potential exposure they would have if they moved the CESC into the same office as the Clinton Foundation. This took place around the time they were attempting to restructure. When this was proposed they were still under a lease obligation. The concern about the exposure and the landlord leaking information about an empty office can be seen here:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/45082

a. Do we want to move these personnel from Harlem? Keep in mind that we risk exposure because it will mean GSA is paying for an empty 8600 squarefeet until August 2014, our first out option. We have landlords who aren’t happy we moved most of our operations out of their building and wouldn’t mind leaking an empty floor to the press.

b. If we are okay with taking the exposure risk, do we envision the auditors coming back and recommending (and BC accepting) that CESC shouldnot operate within CF space even with a sub-lease agreement?

c. The advantages of course are obvious – better business continuity, management, etc.

The following email is the results of the internal audit conducting by the law firm. From the attached document, I have taken the following excerpt:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/44431

a. The Foundation has a Conflict-of-Interest Policy applicable to directors, officers, and key employees and a separate policy for other employees. Publicize and conduct training to familiarize employees about these policies and/or how they are implemented.

b. The Foundation has a longstanding policy regarding outside employment. In general, the Foundation’s Code of Conduct provides that employees wishing to obtain employment outside of the Foundation must first secure the approval of their immediate supervisor, which may be granted or denied in the supervisor’s sole discretion, after consultation with the Director of Human Resources. Publicize and conduct training to familiarize employees about these policies and/or how they are implemented.

c. In general, hold regular training sessions regarding Foundation policies. Set the tone at the top and encourage a culture where policies are understood and compliance is the norm.

d. Ensure that staff is aware of reporting lines and that managers at all levels are aware of their responsibility to enforce policies. Establish clear pathways to obtain clarification when needed in applying policies to specific situations.

e. Educate the Board and staff as to proper and timely disclosure of conflicts of interest. Instruct officers and managers to educate staff as to provisions of the employee conflicts policy and how to raise conflicts with managers as conflicts arise.

f. Adopt a clear gift acceptance policy and procedures to ensure that all donors are properly vetted.

g. Have all CGI “comp Memberships” vetted by CGI Management to ensure that all such Membership offers advance the interests of CGI.

In response to this, Cheryl Mills proposes her restructuring to avoid potential investigations. The following has an email attachment that was drafted by Cheryl Mills. In the attachment she outlines why they need to restructure the entire foundation. Below is a direct quote from the attachment:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46634

Currently, the President personally compensates certain employees to perform duties that fall outside of the scope of the Foundation entities’ mission. These employees support the President’s business, personal, former president and political activity, while also providing support for Foundation activity (for which their services are billed to the Foundation

 

Here is where they further discuss an issue of letting CESC employees retain CESC benefits while working for the Clinton Foundation (as was done previously). They are concerned that doing so will not create the “perception” that there is a divide between the CESC and CF.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/38408

HR and I had a follow up discussion and HR reminded me that CESC is currently served by the multi plan benefit network and thus would this new CESC allow it’s employees currently accessing CF benefits to retain those benefits rather than force them to switch to CF. I thought this would be legally difficult if we are trying to formalize the lines, perception and real, but you all tell me

ENTER STAGE LEFT: TENEO AND CHELSEA

After Teneo was created, Chelsea Clinton smelled something fishy about the whole thing and started investigating it. Here are a few of the claims she was concerned about:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/39916

A former MF Global employee accused former president William J. Clinton of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before the brokerage careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution.

Why would Jon Corzine do that for Bill Clinton? Because they had been friends for a long time… He served on a presidential committee for Bill Clinton and on a Department of Treasury’s borrowing committee. Take a look through the MF Global bankruptcy and the whole thing reeks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Global

Here is another lovely quote from that same email: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/39916

voiced serious concerns to Bari – including telling her Ilya has called Members of the House and Members of Parliament, “on behalf of President Clinton,” for Teneo clients (eg for Andrew Liveris and Dow who’s coming this month to London), without my father’s knowledge and inelegantly and ineffectually at best and at worse has now precipitating people in London making comparisons between my father and Tony Blair’s profit motivations.

Chelsea voiced her concerns to her parents and they referred her to… Cheryl Mills. Here is an outline of several more allegations Chelsea is concerned about:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31334

• today that Doug reached out to someone at Harry Walker (who represents my father on all speaking arrangements), to ask for a full list of all his speeches, how much he was paid for each speech, and told the contact person at Harry Walker that all speeches should now go through him, not Terry Krinivic (the scheduler)
• that Ilya physically saw/caught Justin a couple of days ago reading his bberry and loading the same spyware onto his computer that he loaded onto Bari’s computer
• a secret service agent told Marc (my husband) that Justin had asked another secret service agent to lie about the parking pass absurdity [we > can talk about this really ridiculous anecdote offline]
• multiple people shared with me how upset they were at hearing how Justin referred to my father in the last week – in very derogatory ways widely sadly
• Oscar told my father he knows Justin reads his emails
• my father was told today of explicit examples at CGI of Doug/ Teneo pushing for – and receiving – free memberships – and of multiple examples of Teneo ‘hustling’ business at CGI – and of people now having quit at CGI
• that Doug told Jon Davidson he was never going to forgive him for not reporting that Dad met with John (ie you John) on Sunday and that how could Jon forget who he really worked for
• Doug told Terry Krinivic she would never work again in this town if she didn’t back him up on everything
• *Ilya believes Hannah and Justin have taken significant sums of money from my parents personally – some in expenses – cars, etc. – and others directly

Cheryl worked to downplay the information and collude with Band, Podesta, and the other CF staffers to solve the issue. The following explains why she did not interact herself:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/42061

Cheryl, Victoria told me you were not able to work out how to become covered under privilege.As such, she recommended our meeting and call be only my father, the Board and John. My father wants it to be Bruce, John, me and him.

Band loses it after all of this speculation only against him and his company Teneo. The following are email exchanges where he has complaining about the hypocrisy, because other top CF staff also have external employers/influence:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/21496

Justin and I already are not employees of the foundation. We are employees of cesc. But we could make it more official as advisors to it or something. Otherwise, raising money for it would be odd with no connectivity

Ira runs chai and has been doing outside consulting all these years

Bob harrison has a ton of goldman stock and makes decisions on gold mans engagement/role in cgi

Valerie uses office space of a donor in chicago

Bruce was paid by his law firm for years and may still be

People sit on boards, for profit ones and not for profit ones

I am sure there are many others we don’t know about

Another exchange:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46430

I have to agree. I think there WJC may have some real serious conflicts if we start to make too many rules. *It may be time to update some procedures but we can not ignore the nexus of WJC’s life. *

Also. I signed a conflict of interest policy as a board member of cgi. On it, I wrote that my wife designs bags for cgi, and loses money doing so plus donating her time.And that teneo represents 4 cgi sponsors, 3 of which teneo brought to cgi. Oddly, wjc does not have to sign such a document even though he is personally paid by 3 cgi sponsors, gets many expensive gifts from them, some that are at home etc

I could add 500 different examples of things like this and while I removed lasry bc they are all on the offense, I get the sense that they are trying to put some sort of wrong doing on me after the audit as a crutch to change things and if I don’t mention things like lasry where they all have issues, I may regret it

And, in the words of DJ Khaled, another one…

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36761

I’m also starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed. Dk and I built a business. 65 people work for us who have wives and husbands and kids, they all depend on us. Our business has almost nothing to do with the clintons, the foundation or cgi in any way. The chairman of ubs could care a less about cgi. Our fund clients who we do restructuring and m and a advising the same just as bhp nor tivo do. These are real companies who we provide real advice to through very serious people. Comm head for goldman, dep press secretary to bloomberg, former head of banking, and his team, from morgan stanley for asia and latin am.

Another one: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/42839

For teneo, well before mf global, we have been discussing this. Its going to hurt teneo to have wjc on the adv bd any longer but we need come up with a reorg concept for the relationship with wjc and teneo that is lower key and handled privately and properly that we should discuss

Another one:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46199

I just received a call from a close friend of wjcs who said that cvc told one of the bush 43 kids that she is conducting an internal investigation of money within the foundation from cgi to the foundation. The bush kid then told someone else who then told an operative within the republican party. I have heard more and more chatter of cvc and bari talking about lots of what is going on internally to people. Not smart

This was Podesta’s reply:

You are perfecting your skills for understatement

In 2013, Band was still feeling very vulnerable. So he decided to write a letter about himself, send it to John Podesta, and have John Podesta send it out. The letter can be found as an attachment, but this is an excerpt from the email itself:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/17376

Thank you again for doing this, means more to me than you know.
Had a hard time writing this as you can imagine. I spent hours in front of a blank screen so I had some help from my teen folks. Tried to tone it down but will let you have a look

The Story of How Ira (and Bill Clinton) Stole His Piece of the $100M UN Pie

This following is about the CCI (Clinton Climate Initiative):

One of the major programs involved with CCI is the island energy campaign. Where they facilitate the installation of solar energy systems on Island nations. The whole idea was supposedly drawn up by GE, according to this excerpt:

GE has approached about jointly developing a model high-renewable island (GE has a pilot in Hawaii, where they’re helping the govt figure out how to go from 0% to 60% renewables – the idea would be to apply this to select island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific). The World Bank/IFC has offered to fund. Others want to be involved as well.

The link can be found here, it is at the very bottom of the chain: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/9995

Here is an excerpt on the role CF might play. Notice how it talks entirely about GE. There’s a brief mention of their willingness to work with Siemens in these emails, but the entire idea seems driven by GE:

On a broad level, Clinton Foundation would manage the political relationship (Grenada, Maldives, Samoa, etc), and do the early-stage development work – the initial business planning, walking govt and the local utility through the economics and financing, advising through the RFP and policy process, etc.

GE would provide the technical perspective: resource assessment, grid modelling, system design and integration, advanced renewable and smart grid technology, etc. Especially for the first few flagship islands, GE would be willing to devote significant R&D and engineering resources from GE Energy, from their Ecomagination program and from their R&D labs.

 

From that same email chain, we have reference to Hillary Clinton’s ability to reach out to Island nations and get them on board:

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this (positive or negative). I would love to begin floating it during the APEC conference in Hawaii in mid-November. I believe Secretary Clinton will be there, as will many representatives from Pacific Island governments.

It all seems like good charity work until we get to these two emails. The first shows that they will present the entire thing as a “contest” and use UN funds to give to GE when they “win” the contest:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36510

The UNDP has indicated they want to support CCI, via the SIDS DOCK Island Fund. This is a $100mn fund that was established at the Copenhagen conference ($40mn has been raised to date)

We are considering a new approach, to structure the initiative as a “contest” – challenging the private sector (ie GE, Siemens, Vestas, etc) to design an innovative island-wide renewable energy plan. Something that takes a specific island to a specific target – say 80% or even 100% renewables (wind, solar, waste, hydro). The “winning” plan would be financed via the SIDS DOCK fund.

I did not place those quotes in there, look for yourself. Beyond the collusion insinuated here to give 100m in UN funds to GE under the guise of a “contest”. Ira Magaziner apparently saw this as his opportunity to enrich himself and his team:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/17472

Someone should go back to WJC and confirm that he approved the Island initiative “as is” including the $1 million Clinton Foundation budget (over and above any funding from UNDP), which budget includes a $100,000 salary for Ira (on top of his CHAI salary) and a staff of nine (despite the fact that one of the people who works for Ira says that most of this staff is unnecessary) and that he agreed to split the Swedish post code lottery funds which means that we will have to use Clinton Foundation funds to fund our AFL-CIO/pension fund retrofit work.

The more I dig, the more there is about energy. In the attachment from this email:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/28725

There is an attached plan for the “diesel replacement” aka the Island Initiative. This is a quote from Ira Magaziner’s 8 page document about the Island Initiative, where he discusses the conflicts of interest and turning it into a long-term profit:

Over time, we expect to develop a sustainable business model where we can secure funds from the payback on projects at closing that will sustain our participation. If it were not for the potential conflicts of interest associated with Secretary Clinton being Secretary of State, we could form partnerships with Governments from the outset which would give us potential returns from projects that we help launch. Once she is no longer Secretary of State, we could structure this work to cover our expenses or even to provide a considerable source of long term funding for the Clinton Foundation.

They apparently also worked with the National Renewable Energy Lab in Haiti? I’m not sure if this is nefarious, but it is worth asking questions about. They seemed interested in helping with Islands Initiative too. The involvement of a US branch like that seems like something Hillary would have organized not Bill:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/47744

Another quick request. We’ve begun to work closely with NREL, the US Natl Renewable Energy Lab, on the island energy initiative. NREL is also involved in a few things in Haiti, and they have a team going down there in a few weeks. They expressed interest in meeting with someone from the Clinton Foundation or the President’s team in order to get some background on energy, infrastructure, etc

Furthermore, there is mention of the solar park work they have going on. Interestingly, the Gujurat solar park they helped established is not mentioned anywhere on the Clinton Foundation’s websites:

The Asian Development Bank is already partnering with us on solar park projects in India. They are keenly interested in working with us on diesel replacement opportunities. We are working with the Industrial Development Corporation and the Development Bank of South Africa on solar projects in South Africa and they both have mandates to go to other parts of Southern Africa to do renewable projects. The World Bank has a fund for projects like these.

I wonder why they don’t want it mentioned…

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46743

President Clinton may want to know about this. It is an article in the London Times about the launch of the Gujarat solar park. The book put out by the Gujarat Government as well as this and other articles acknowledge our role.

FINALLY THE 2015 REACTIONS WHEN PRESS STARTS TO GET A WHIFF OF SOMETHING FOUL

Example 1:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46014

I’m sensitive to that (which is why I’m asking) but those CHAI Stats are on nearly every public listing of CF accomplishment. I’m want to make people think twice about calls for dropping grants to CF or return the money and the HIV/AIDS work hits home in a way that other stats don’t. Plus it’s international work. I’m concerned about saying we used money to fund healthy schools (because we didn’t use the funding for that)

They are discussing using CHAI’s good deeds to deflect allegations about foreign conflicts of interest still being allowed to donate.

Example 2:

Robby Mook doesn’t think the CHAI line is going to cover it. You can feel his angst through this email:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46877

Should we do another convo w Maura about really beefing up their efforts? Still feels like their plan to push accomplishments is thin. Or am I just being anxious?

Example 3:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/46045

I’m hoping someone is keeping tabs on Doug Band. Quote in here is from someone who worked in Clinton Foundation.

THEY FIRST IMPLICATE ERIC BRAVERMAN, WHO IS EITHER MISSING OR IN FBI CUSTODY RIGHT NOW

And finally, we have the foreign governments who have donated to the foundation for no expressed purpose…

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/45288

So virtually all of these donations were to the endowment and were not for specific projects, correct? And are there examples of projects that are currently supported/funded through the endowment, or is the Foundation just building the endowment at this point (no disbursements)?

The reply to the question:

Qatar was for CGI . The only governments that donated to the endowment were: Saudi Arabia, Oman, and UAE

Same email:

Sorry to be clear – foundation stops — means stop taking foreign gov’t money. Is that possible? If not we’re going to be very vulnerable on that throughout and I think our opponents and some on our side will say at is unseemly for a potential U.S. President taking money from foreign governments for her private foundation.

 

PLEASE TWEET/EMAIL/POST THIS TO GET EXPOSURE. WE NEED THE MEDIA AND PEOPLE IN CHARGE TO PUT PRESSURE ON THIS AND GET THE FULL STORY

Here is a PDF version of this guide for sharing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByFWjHedOlCqQ2xWSEtwWGpBd3M/view?usp=sharing