(Via Zerohedge)
Former President Bill Clinton lashed out on Twitter Saturday in response to accusations that daughter Chelsea Clinton used Clinton Foundation funds to pay for her wedding, calling it a “personal insult to me, to Hillary, and to Chelsea and Marc,” referring to son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky.
Bill was triggered after controversy surrounding the Clinton Foundation’s involvement in Haiti was rehashed following a tweet by Chelsea Clinton – criticizing President Trump’s alleged use of the word “shithole” in reference to several impoverished countries, including Haiti – which the Clintons have a long and sordid history of screwing over.
In response to Chelsea Clinton’s tweet that “Immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and the 54 countries in Africa likely helped build your buildings,” conservative journalist Paul Joseph Watson brought up claims revealed in an email published by WikiLeaks that the Clinton Foundation used money designated for Haiti relief towards Chelsea Clinton’s wedding:
Linked at the bottom of Bill Clinton’s tweet is a Washington Post article, “fact checking” a 2012 email published by WikiLeaks sent from long-time Bill Clinton aide, who became notorious in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election for his extensive insider revelations on the true nature of the Clinton Foundation, as leaked by WikiLeaks, Doug Band to John Podesta, in which Band urges Podesta to speak with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about “The investigation into her [Chelsea Clinton] getting paid for campaigning, using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade, taxes on money from her parents..”
Hilariously, the WaPo “fact check” Bill Clinton links to relies on the suggestion that Doug Band lied to John Podesta about Chelsea due to “bad blood” – after Band had left the Clinton Foundation to start Teneo Holdings.
Band appears to be alleging Chelsea Clinton engaged in some inappropriate use of Clinton Foundation “resources” — whatever that is — for her 2010 wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. Clearly, there’s some bad blood between Chelsea Clinton and Band, who had left the foundation in 2011 to start his own company, Teneo Holdings. -WaPo
WikiLeaks points out that while Bill Clinton’s tweet says no Clinton Foundation “funds” were used on Chelsea’s wedding, Doug Band uses the word “resources.”
In addition to Chelsea’s wedding, WikiLeaks emails also revealed that husband Marc Mezvinsky used Clinton Foundation connections to raise money for his hedge fund.
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.” -Politico
Who is Doug Band?
Band, 45, was a longtime personal assistant to Bill Clinton, and considered the “key architect” of the Clinton post-presidency; helping to create the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) which allowed the Clintons to accept foreign aid. Band left the Clinton Foundation in 2011 to form investment banking and advisory firm, Teno Holdings, along with Hillary Clinton’s top fundraiser for her 2008 campaign, Declan Kelly.
Of note, Band negotiated with the Obama administration for the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State:
Inside the Obama transition, the intense vetting for the Clintons, dubbed by some as “the project,” is being handled by a small circle of close advisers to each side. Representing the Clintons are: Cheryl Mills, a former Clinton administration official and top aide to Sen. Clinton during her presidential bid; Doug Band, counselor to Mr. Clinton; and Bruce Lindsey, chief executive of the William J. Clinton Foundation. Obama transition chief John Podesta, and his deputy, Todd Stern, are spearheading the discussions for Mr. Obama. -WSJ
Chelsea vs. Doug
As we wrote in October, 2016 – with each new WikiLeaks dump, the rabbit hole in the feud between Chelsea Clinton and Doug Band seemed to grow a little deeper. In a November 11, 2011 email from Chelsea to John Podesta, Cheryl Mills and the Clinton Foundation lawyers – Chelsea clearly lists out her issues with Clinton aides Doug Band, Justin Cooper and someone referred to only as “Hannah,” which is presumably Hannah Deletto, Director of Membership at the Clinton Foundation.
Among other things, the email alleges that Justin Cooper installed spyware on Bill Clinton’s computer in order to monitor his email traffic, that both Justin Cooper and Hannah Deletto stole “significant sums of money” from the Clintons and that Doug Band / Teneo “hustled business at CGI.”
Band, meanwhile, had a bad habit of being brutally honest over email about “spoiled brat” Chelsea… The following example comes from January 2012 when Band forwards a complimentary email from Chelsea (aka “Diane Reynolds”) essentially calling her a two-faced backstabber.
She sends me one of these types of emails every few days/week
As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far
A kiss on the cheek while she is sticking a knife in the back, and front
Of course, this wasn’t the first time Band intimated his true feelings about Chelsea to Podesta. Just a couple of months earlier, in November 2011, Band sent the following email after Chelsea expressed her views that Band’s firm, Teneo, created potential conflicts of interest in going to State Department officials to seek assistance for clients, including MF Global.
“She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she’s doing because she, as she has said, hasn’t found her way and has a lack of focus in her life. I realize she will be off of this soon but if it doesn’t come soon enough….”
After that, the situation escalated to the point that Band sent the following email two days later saying that Chelsea had pushed Clinton Foundation COO, Laura Graham, to the brink of suicide. Within the email Band describes an encounter in which he received a “late night” call from Graham who was:
“…on staten island in her car parked a few feet from the waters edge with her foot on the gas pedal and the car in park. She called me to tell me the stress of all of this office crap with wjc and cvc as well as that of her family had driven her to the edge and she couldn’t take it anymore.”
Chelsea, meanwhile launched an internal investigation into the Clinton Global Initiative and Clinton Foundation, according to a January, 2012 email Doug Band sent to John Podesta:
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
The Clintons vs. Haiti
Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton’s feud aside, the Clintons have a long and sordid history with Haiti, including;
Hillary Clinton’s State Department pressured Haiti to suppress their minimum wage in sweatshops in order to benefit US clothing manufacturers
factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.
To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.
A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”
-The Nation
Clinton Foundation donors were were allegedly handed government contracts to clean up in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake:
Bill Clinton intervened in the jail sentence of Laura Silsby, a convicted child trafficker who attempted to smuggle 33 children out of Haiti.
Of note, Huma Abedin was constantly forwarding Hillary Clinton articles on Silsby’s organization.
Hillary and Bill Clinton took an extraordinary interest in Silsby’s case from the moment she was arrested and almost immediately stepped in on her behalf. The Harvard Human Rights Journal stated that one of Bill Clinton’s first acts as special envoy for the United Nations in Haiti “was to put out the fire of a child abduction scandal involving American citizens.” On February 7th, 2010, The Sunday Times reported that Bill Clinton had intervened to strike a deal with the Haitian government, securing the release of all co-conspirators except for Silsby. Prosecutors ultimately sought a six-month sentence in Silsby’s case, reducing charges for conspiracy and child abduction to mere “arranging irregular travel.” A shockingly light penalty given the circumstances of her arrest, which would likely not have been possible but for the intervention of the Clintons in Silsby’s case. -Disobedient Media
And the attorney who represented Laura Silsby? Convicted human trafficker Jorge Puello Torres.
SANTO DOMINGO, March 19 (Reuters) – A Dominican Republic man who acted as legal adviser to a group of U.S. missionaries held for several weeks in Haiti on child kidnapping charges has been arrested in Santo Domingo, local police said on Friday. Jorge Puello Torres, wanted by El Salvador as a suspect in a human trafficking ring, was detained at a car wash in the city late on Thursday, a spokesman from the Dominican Republic’s police anti-narcotics unit said. He was arrested in the Dominican Republic’s capital on a warrant issued by Interpol, the international police organization. (reuters)
Oddly, a former Haitian government official set to expose the Clinton Foundation’s misdeeds in Haiti shot himself in the head a week before he was able to testify. Klaus Eberwein, was found dead in a Miami Dade motel room in what examiners ruled a suicide.
According to Miami-Dade’s medical examiner records supervisor, the official cause of death is “gunshot to the head.“ Eberwein’s death has been registered as “suicide” by the government. But not long before his death, he acknowledged that his life was in danger because he was outspoken on the criminal activities of the Clinton Foundation.
Eberwein was a fierce critic of the Clinton Foundation’s activities in the Caribbean island, where he served as director general of the government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social, for three years. “The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace,” Eberwein said at a protest outside the Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan in 2016. Eberwein was due to appear before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors. But this “suicide” gets even more disturbing…
Eberwein was only 50-years-old and reportedly told acquaintances he feared for his life because of his fierce criticism of the Clinton Foundation. His close friends and business partners were taken aback by the idea he may have committed suicide. “It’s really shocking,” said friend Gilbert Bailly. “We grew up together; he was like family.”
