by Dick Morris
Reason Twelve: Nepotism—the Clinton Family Money Grab
The practice of nepotism, giving special favors to family members and special friends, reached brand new levels in the Clinton White House. Every one of the Clinton siblings, Roger Clinton and Hugh and Tony Rodham, traded on their family names and were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure presidential pardons. Even after Bill Clinton left office, Roger Clinton and Tony Rodham have continued to trade on the family name and relationships. And especially since Bill Clinton became the virtual ruler of Haiti and Hillary was viewed as a likely next president, great opportunities for the family have continued to pour in. And now even Chelsea has joined the nepotistic team.
Chelsea Clinton Trades in on the Family Name
Chelsea is out there now, campaigning hard for Mom, attacking Sanders and Trump, and even fanning speculation that she might become the third Clinton to launch her own political career. God help us. Chelsea Clinton has lived a life of privilege and entitlement, and her professional life has been entirely based on exploiting her family connections. Unlike the rest of the world, Chelsea has never had to look for a job. They’ve all been handed to her because her last name is Clinton, and not because of any special, or even not so special, talents. She’s the Princess of Nepotism. Her first job was an entry-level position at McKinsey, where she certainly had to be viewed as an asset for attracting clients. Next, one of her mother’s biggest donors hired her at Avenue Capital, where she didn’t exactly wow the financial community. She left after three years, once she realized that she just “couldn’t . . . care about money.”82
How touching and insightful. No need to care about money when it’s just handed to you. No need to worry about student loans when you have degrees from Stanford, Columbia, and Oxford (2), and you didn’t need any student loans. No need to worry about money when your parents help your husband’s career and their donors invest in his hedge fund, even though it’s not too successful. No need to worry about housing when you live in a $10 million apartment in New York. No need to worry about a job when you’re given one, regardless of your qualifications (or lack of them). Really, who needs money?
Certainly not Chelsea. After she left Wall Street, she pursued an academic career, once again, using her family contacts. In 2010, NYU president John Sexton, friend of Bill, appointed her as assistant vice provost of the Global Network University at NYU, bringing together Muslims and Jews in New York and around the globe. Not clear what her qualifications were, other than daughter of Bill and Hillary, when asked about this role, she told Time Magazine that she was passionate about “trying to really figure out what the right pedagogy should be in multifaith and interfaith education and leadership.”83 Sounds fascinating. And typical Chelsea Clinton blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
In 2013, she allegedly cofounded and chaired the NYU multifaith “Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership.” She insisted that her interfaith marriage to a Jewish husband qualified her for this position. Of course. When evidence of brutal treatment of workers and violations of basic human rights were lodged against NYU’s construction workers at the new campus of the Global Network University in Abu Dhabi, Ms. Clinton was silent about the abuses to her new Muslim constituency. Could her silence be related to Bill’s fees for speaking at NYU graduations or to his trip to Abu Dhabi to speak to the first graduating class of the Global Network University, where he never mentioned the controversy? That’s not her department.
Chelsea’s next job was as a Special Correspondent for NBC TV. That was a bust, but a lucrative one. She had a contract for $600,000 a year, although in 2014 she only appeared on four very boring segments, including an interview with the Geico Gecko. So bad was she on camera that she usually did only voice over segments with very little actual live time, if any, on camera. Even NBC realized how bad she was and dumped her, but not before she collected over $1.5 million. Apparently, Ms. Clinton received very special treatment at NBC. Agents hired by her parents basically came in and convinced the idiots at the network that she would be an asset. They were dead wrong. And she insisted on being treated like a prima donna. NBC staff were told not to approach her but to go through her producers. The few interviews she did were painful to watch. Chelsea is not a natural.
She was also reportedly paid $300,000 for sitting on the board of a Barry Diller’s company. No telling what that’s about. Barry and his wife, Diane von Furstenberg, are big fans and supporters of Bill and Hillary. It’s lucrative and prestigious to have the Clinton last name.
Now Chelsea is vice chairman of the Clinton Foundation, another position where she seems to be in over her head. She has six staffers at her disposal. Bill only has five. And although scarcely an inspiring speaker, she goes out to speak on behalf of the foundation—at least five organizations have actually been so shameless in courting her parents that they paid to hear her speak. Hard to believe. One Florida charity even paid $75,000. Embarrassingly awkward in front of a microphone, even after years of practice, her speeches are littered with the same canned lines no matter who she is speaking to.
Apparently Chelsea’s leadership and management talents are not really appreciated at the foundation. Since she has been involved, lots of folks have left, claiming she was “unpleasant” to deal with. Of course, she’s had no management experience.
Chelsea also has no experience as an author. Yet the Clinton-friendly publishing house reached out to her to write a book about issues that are important to young adults. Anyway, she’ll figure it out—with help from aides, ghosts, and so on. And once again, she’ll trade on the Clinton name. That’s what she does.
The Rodham and Clinton Brothers’ Constant Quest to Grab Big Bucks
Tony Rodham Tries to Get Visas for Chinese Cyberspies
Hillary’s ne’er-do-well brother, Tony Rodham, was implicated in a federal investigation about his efforts to obtain visas for two Chinese nationals linked to a company controlled by the Chinese Army after their applications and appeals were categorically denied by the government. Their Chinese employer, Huawei Technologies, then invested in a company ostensibly headed by Rodham to help them out. Nobody in the Clinton-Rodham family seemed to notice that this might be a big conflict of interest while his sister was Secretary of State. The brouhaha is all about the federal Immigrant Investor Program, also known as EB-5. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services administers this program that offers foreign investors, mainly Chinese, a path to citizenship in return for a $500,000 cash investment that is used to create 10 US jobs.
The investments were supposed to help immigrant investors. But these were no ordinary investors—and no ordinary immigrants. No, Huawei Technologies had been caught pirating American technology and there have been serious national security concerns about their activities. Huawei has repeatedly tried to purchase stakes in American telephone and communications companies, only to be denied permission by the Foreign Investment Review Board on national security grounds because of suspected links to the Chinese military. We don’t trust them. And we shouldn’t. Equally disturbing is the company’s commercial alliances with enemies of the United States, including projects in Iran, where they developed devices to track dissidents through their phones.
But that didn’t stop Tony. If there was money to be made, he was right on it.
According to Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered American aircraft to join British warplanes in a “raid on an Iraqi air defense network that had been targeting US aircraft patrolling the skies over Iraq. Some fifty jets bombed an air defense control center for fiber optic cables that Huawei technicians had installed in violation of UN sanctions.”84 Huawei also assisted the Taliban by installing a phone system in Kabul, Afghanistan. These are the folks that Rodham was promoting. The United States doesn’t want them here—and with good reason. They don’t belong here. But Tony Rodham took money to be a front man in a company dedicated to helping them get the coveted visas.<
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Clinton family best friend and current governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, brought Rodham in to a company he had set up. The fact that Rodham’s sister was secretary of state was, of course, a big plus. The Huawei Company evidently thought so, because even as brother Tony was trying to get their executives into the country, the company was lobbying the White House and the State Department over a variety of issues. Guess that Rodham name might help? Did it help to have the name Rodham on an application to the government while his sister is secretary of state?
Rodham, of course, had no professional experience in this area and only a year before becoming CEO of the company was a deadbeat dad sued for over $100,000 in back child support. His entire adult life has been spent trying to make money off his family connections—from selling hazelnuts in the nation of Georgia to selling pardons in the White House. It’s highly unlikely that Hillary had no idea what Tony was up to. Make that impossible that she didn’t know. And he’s still at it.
All in the Family: Tony and Roger Go to Haiti
Following the Haiti earthquake, Bill and Hillary Clinton became the most powerful people in Haiti. Through the State Department, the Bush–Clinton Haiti Fund, and the Clinton Foundation, they controlled the granting of all contracts for rebuilding Haiti.
Bill Clinton ran Haiti after he was appointed as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. In addition, he and Jean-Max Bellerive, a former prime minister, headed the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) that had to give final approval to every reconstruction project. Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff and a longtime Clinton Foundation board member, was the State Department liaison to Haiti and was a member of the IHRC. So anyone who wanted to get anything done in Haiti had to get the OK from the IHRC . . . and, presumably HRC. Let’s leave aside for the moment Bill’s and Hillary’s own greed and malfeasance, which could fill a book, seeing yet another opportunity for trading on their famous names, Tony Rodham and Roger Clinton prowled around for a new project. Not surprisingly, both of them found something in Haiti.
Tony’s Mining Company Connection
Tony was given a seat on the board of a company that received the first permit to mine for gold in Haiti, again exploiting and making money, this time off Hillary and Bill’s role as the savior of Haiti. How did Tony get the gold-mining gig? At a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, he met the chief executive of the Delaware-based VCS Mining Company. Guess the CEO was blown away by Tony’s talents . . . or maybe he looked around and saw just how things worked. One thing is certain: Bill Clinton had to know about Tony’s mining deal. When the details became public in 2013, the Haiti Senate passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on all activities connected to gold mining permits, citing the historic “pillaging” of Haiti’s natural resources. The IHRC would know all about it—and so would HRC and WJC. They just chose, once again, to look the other way.
Tony’s Land Grant in Haiti: A Gift of 10,000 Acres
According to the New York Times, Tony also tried to get approval from the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund for a $22 million project to rebuild housing in Haiti from which he expected to make $1 million profit. Tony admitted that “a guy in Haiti” had “donated” 10,000 acres of land to him. So who was this very generous guy? And why would anyone give anything to Tony Rodham—except to try to influence the Clintons, who were running the show in Haiti. Tony testified under oath in a lawsuit filed by his former lawyer that he was in regular contact with Bill Clinton, nudging him to grant the $22 million from his Fund, and that he was assured that it would happen soon. In his testimony, Tony made it clear that the Clinton Foundation was the vehicle for his dealings. According to the New York Times, he said that it was the foundation that got him in touch with officials in Haiti. The Clinton Foundation denied knowing anything about it. Sure.
Roger’s Haiti Consulting Deal
Meanwhile, Roger was able to pick up a $100,000 consulting gig with a group of builders who wanted to build houses in Haiti. His benefactor, businessman Wayne Coleman, told the New York Times, “I paid Roger $100,000 . . . Basically, he promised to get us a contract through the Clinton Foundation for a project over there. What he was really trying to do was sell the influence of his brother.”85 Neither Roger’s nor Tony’s Haiti schemes have worked out.
Roger’s Foreign Cash
During the Clinton presidency, Bill Clinton’s brother Roger collected $700,000 in cash, money orders, and American Express Travelers Cheques issued in foreign countries. Roger told FBI agents that he “received money for President Clinton from foreign governments”86 during Bill’s presidency. Roger says that the first few times he came to Washington bearing cash, he gave it to his brother. But after that, he told the FBI that either Bill or his staff told him that the president could not accept money from foreign governments and that he should send the money back.
Now that’s a good one, isn’t it? What are the odds that Roger Clinton packed up wads of cash and sent it back to where it came from? And what about the first few times? What happened to that money? In 2002, the House Committee on Government Reform issued a scathing report on the Clinton presidential pardons with disturbing findings about Bill’s brother. “Roger Clinton engaged in a systematic effort to trade on his brother’s name”87 during the Clinton administration, the report found. The section of the Committee report on Roger went well beyond just pardons and included a number of his other schemes to trade on his relationship to the president.
His combined take was $700,000—and that’s just what he deposited in his bank account and could be traced. It seems likely that he pocketed or spent at least some additional cash. Roger insisted that his brother was aware of his activities and approved of them. Roger admitted to receiving $335,000 in cash and traveler’s checks from foreign sources such as South Korea, Venezuela, and Taiwan that were deposited into his account during Bill’s presidency, as well as an additional $150,000. Roger refused to tell the Committee why he had received the checks, but apparently told the FBI that a lot of it was for overseas “concerts” by his band. Let’s get real. Roger wasn’t exactly Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.
The committee noted that the fact that the traveler’s checks were provided blank, “suggests that the funds were intentionally provided to Clinton in a manner calculated to conceal their origin.”88 All of the traveler’s checks were purchased overseas and brought to the United States by Roger Clinton, who did not disclose them to Customs officials as required by federal law. The Committee also noted that it was likely that there were more traveler’s checks and cash that were not deposited into his account.
The House Committee uncovered these checks totaling $335,000 in Roger Clinton’s bank account:
Date Deposited Type of Check Origin Purchaser Name Amount
November 30, 1998
American Express
Unknown
Chen Jianxing
$1,000
November 30, 1998
American Express
Unknown
Chen Jianxing
$1,000
December 1, 1998
American Express
Taiwan
Huang Xian Wen
$15,000
December 8, 1998
American Express
Taiwan
Huang Xian Wen
$23,000
December 15, 1998
Citicorp
Taiwan
Unknown
$90,000
December 15, 1998
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
$29,000
December 15, 1998
Visa-Sumitomo
Taiwan
Lin Mei Guang
$4,000
December 15, 1998
American Express
Taiwan
Huang Xian Wen
$2,000
July 12, 1999
American Express
Unknown
Unknown<
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$20,000
July 12, 1999
Citicorp
South Korea
Sook-Eun Jang
$5,000
November 30, 1999
Citicorp
Taiwan
Unknown
$3,000
November 30, 1999
Citicorp
Taiwan
Unknown
$10,000
November 30, 1999
Citicorp
Taiwan
Unknown
$5,000
November 30, 1999
Visa
Taiwan
Unknown
$1,000
November 30, 1999
Visa
Taiwan
Xu Jingsheng
$3,000
November 30, 1999
Citicorp
Venezuela
Pedro Jose Garboza Matos
$38,000
November 30, 1999
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
$40,000
February 22, 2000
American Express
Taiwan
Qu Guang Yin
$7,000
March 24, 2000
Citicorp
Venezuela
Pedro Jose Garboza Matos
$3,000
April 5, 2000
American Express
