Doug Band, once one of Bill Clinton’s closest advisers, accused the former president of having hundreds of conflicts of interest between his family’s embattled foundation, its sponsors, and a connected consulting firm called Teneo Holdings LLC, according to purported emails produced by WikiLeaks.
“I signed a conflict of interest policy as a board member of cgi,” Band wrote in a November 2015 email to John Podesta. Referring to Bill Clinton as “wjc,” Band wrote, “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.”
Band continued, candidly admitting that he “could add 500 different examples of things like this.”
Band served as a top aide to President Bill Clinton in the nineties and assisted in creating the Clinton Global Initiative. He is also a founding partner of Teneo, a global consulting firm — with several connections to the Clintons — that obtained approval from the State Department for a paid consulting arrangement between Bill Clinton and Band.
Teneo is the same firm that paid Mrs. Clinton’s longtime right-hand woman Huma Abedin while she worked as a senior adviser to Clinton at the State Department.
A few months after Hillary Clinton took office in 2009, Abedin began communicating with Clinton Foundation donors, who were asking for favors from Clinton’s State Department.
While she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton also handpicked Teneo co-founder and CEO Declan Kelly as her economic envoy to Northern Ireland.
Band’s November 2011 email to Podesta came during his contentious battle with Chelsea Clinton, who was expanding her leadership role at the Clinton Foundation. Clinton had accused Band of abusing his power and “hustling” business for Teneo at CGI meetings. Band responded to the criticism by calling Chelsea Clinton a “spoiled brat.”
“I realize it is difficult to confront and reason with her but this could go to [sic] far and then we all will have a real serious set of other problems. I don’t deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things,” Band wrote in a 2011 email to Podesta, referring to Chelsea by her initials “cvc.”
Band’s email continued, “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.”
Band reportedly cut ties with the Clintons last summer.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson.
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