When it comes to Hillary, the challenge is to have an imagination and begin to ask peculiar questions. There are hedge funds, gold, hidden cable communications, affairs, people known only by an alias and more. But here are yet a few more items for the corruption dossier.
“If she gets in the race, of course this time will be different. And her team will reflect that,” said Nick Merrill, who is currently Clinton’s only on-the-record spokesman.
The expected campaign manager, Robby Mook, values organizing as much as he does data, strategy and messaging. He and campaign chairman John Podesta will be tasked with juggling competing interests and personalities within the campaign and outside of it, from the Clintons on down. Communications head Jennifer Palmieri, who left the Obama administration last week, is seen by reporters and operatives alike as someone who can disagree with those who cover the campaign but will do so respectfully and professionally.
During her last campaign, Clinton’s team was rife with backstabbing, credit claiming, and finger-pointing. Decisions were often put off indefinitely and then made under duress. Her communications staff could be abusive and uncooperative with reporters. For much of the campaign, she was cloistered from voters, reluctant to even hint at the historic nature of her candidacy. And Bill Clinton, at times one of his wife’s greatest assets, was also often huge liability, letting his anger toward Barack Obama show throughout the early months of 2008.
*** While there is a team of Republicans that have a Hillary war-room assigned to researching her entire history, Hillary is hiring a legal team to fend off political attacks. Questions are bubbling to the surface with what media and operatives are uncovering and with good reason.
Emails and Benghazi
Hillary Clinton emailed with her top advisers at the State Department about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi on their own personal emails, despite repeated assurances that she contacted employees on their official addresses, The New York Times is reporting. Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, as well as senior aides Huma Abedin and Philippe Reines, all occasionally emailed Clinton with personal email addresses of their own, the newspaper reported.
The news comes as Clinton continues to face controversy related to her exclusive use of a private email address while at the State Department. Clinton’s team partly justified that email address, which remained on a private server outside the grasp of State, by assuring reporters that it was “her practice to email government officials on their .gov accounts” in order to be sure that they were “immediately captured” as public records.
On top of the more than 30,000 emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department, the House Select Committee on Benghazi is reviewing about 300 that could be related to its investigation. While those emails are not yet public, the Times report sheds light on their content.
The emails reportedly do not lend credibility to allegations of a cover-up of the Benghazi attacks, but they do show her correspondence after a House hearing about a month after the September attacks. Clinton didn’t testify until January, but another State Department official appeared at that hearing.
“Did we survive the day?” Clinton reportedly wrote in an email to an adviser.
“Survive, yes,” the adviser responded, adding that he’ll monitor the public’s reaction, according to the Times.
The emails also reportedly show that Clinton’s camp had initially been worried that she had publicly blamed the attacks on a spontaneous protest instead of an orchestrated terror attack. That initial characterization dogged then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who made the Sunday show rounds connecting the attacks to outcry from an anti-Muslim YouTube video.
Rice was criticized for playing down the attack once the administration began to refer to it as an act of terror. Sullivan emailed Clinton to assure her that she never “characterized the motivation” of the attackers as “spontaneous.”
House Republicans, specifically in the select Benghazi committee, continue to spar with Clinton over her private emails.
Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C) officially requested that she turn over her private server so that an independent investigator can explore whether she deleted any official emails to hide them from public scrutiny.
Mezvinsky, the Son-in-Law
The NYTimes suggesting that Mezvinsky–who is married to Chelsea Clinton–has been able to gain access to investors with ties to the Clintons for the hedge fund he cofounded that’s had “underwhelming returns.”
Back in 2011, Mezvinsky, now 37, and two former Goldman Sachs colleagues–Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon–began raising money for Eaglevale Partners LP.
Some of Eaglevale’s investors include hedge fund billionaire Marc Lasry and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, the report said.
Lasry, a longtime Clinton friend, runs Avenue Capital where Chelsea previously worked after graduating from Stanford. Lasry told the NYTimes that he “gave them money because I thought they would make me money.”
A Goldman spokesman told the NYTimes that Blankfein invested in Eaglevale because of his relationship with Grau, the fund’s chief investment officer. At the DealBook Conference in December, Blankfein, who has been a strong supporter of Democrats in the past, said he’s “always been a fan of Hillary Clinton.” Hillary is expected to announce her presidential campaign soon.
One source said Mezvinsky didn’t raise that much money though.
A person briefed on the matter and close to the firm said the amount of investor money recruited by Mr. Mezvinsky is not large, amounting to less than 10 percent of the firm’s total outside capital. Clinton supporters also say there are more direct ways to cultivate favor with the family, such as giving to the foundation, where Chelsea Clinton is vice chairwoman, than by investing with a hedge fund that her husband co-founded.
Eaglevale currently manages around $400 million in assets.
Haiti, Gold and Hillary’s Brother
It also has become a potentially problematic issue for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she considers a second presidential run, after it was revealed this month that in 2013, one of her brothers was added to the advisory board of the company that owns the mine.
Tony Rodham’s involvement with the mine, which has become a source of controversy in Haiti because of concern about potential environmental damage and the belief that the project will primarily benefit foreign investors, was first revealed in publicity about an upcoming book on the Clintons by author Peter Schweizer.
In interviews with The Washington Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative — an offshoot of the Clinton Foundation that critics have long alleged invites a blurring of its charitable mission with the business interests of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their corporate donors.
