At some point, from what we know of his communications with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta, the guy who established what is now the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has to be regretting that life choice.
WikiLeaks has shared a number of interesting insights from Doug Band, President Bill Clinton’s former “bag man.” But few could be as interesting as his rant to Podesta dated Nov. 17, 2011. In it, he goes off the deep end about the hundreds of conflicts of interests he knew about at the foundation.
“I signed a conflict of interest policy as a board member of [Clinton Global Initiative],” he wrote. “On it, I wrote that my wife designs bags for CGI, and loses money doing so, plus donating her time, and that [Teneo Holdings, another company he has since founded] represents four CGI sponsors, three of which Teneo brought to CGI.
“Oddly, [President Bill Clinton] does not have to sign such a document even though he is personally paid by three 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 [because] they are all on the offense, I get the sense that they are trying to put some sort of wrong doing [sic] 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.”
The “Lasry” Band mentions repeatedly appears to be Marc Lasry, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a board member at CGI. He started Avenue Capital in 1995 with $10 million, but is now reportedly worth more than $10 billion, thanks in large part to those connections.
It’s not clear why he was seen as a potential problem for CGI, but Band’s mention of 500 more conflicts of interest is certainly intriguing. With more than 30,000 emails left to be released, it’s difficult to imagine we won’t find out about at least some of them.
See an error in this article?
To contact us or to submit an article
