Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine

by Daniel Halper

  Then, suddenly, she did.

  Chelsea made her first foray into public life during her mother’s run for president in 2008. Initially her involvement came during her vacation time, but then her role became enhanced. Hillary enjoyed having Chelsea with her on the campaign trail and Chelsea proved an effective and fiercely protective advisor.

  Borrowing the trademark spin of her mother, always publicly reluctant to enter the political fray, Chelsea told Time magazine that campaigning for her mother was “not something I’d ever expected to do.” In the same interview, Chelsea demonstrated a knack for seamless grandstanding. “Then I literally found myself in New Hampshire after she won the primary, and I just thought, ‘I can’t go back to work. I need to go tell whomever will listen why I so strongly believe in her, as a daughter, as a young woman, as an American, as a self-identified progressive.’”22

  She quit her job at the investment firm and went on the trail fulltime, still surrounded by a cocoon of Clinton aides shielding her from the press. (Sometimes, as in the case with David Shuster, she’d have to shield herself from the press’s advances.)

  It was there, in front of crowds large and small, that she began to find her public voice—at least in part. She made the case to Americans that her mom would be a great next president. “I went out on the campaign and I answered questions about my mom and why I so fundamentally believed in her. And sometimes it would be two people and sometimes it’d be 20,000 people. I did more than 400 events in 40 states in about 5 months. And through that process, I really understood why politics was so important and why . . . everyone needed to participate and have their voices heard at the ballot box. And so at this point in my life, what that deep belief has translated into is talking about why I think it’s so critical that people register to vote, and then vote,” she’d explain years later. 23

  But to onlookers trying to figure out who she was, the voice did not appear to be authentically hers—since she was acting as a surrogate for her mother. They still had no clear idea who she was and what she believed in, other than her mom’s political fortunes. Her own outlook on the world went unrevealed—and though she was a strong, passionate, and forceful advocate for her mother, she was only that. They believed they had no sense of her inner core.

  Not that most outsiders seem to care. Chelsea is a beloved celebrity, though not everyone is sure why.

  “The most ridiculous thing I ever saw was after Hillary’s campaign was over—HuffPo wanted to have ‘who is the most likely first woman president?’” says a longtime Clinton associate, who was shocked to see the name Chelsea Clinton on the list. “She’s just right out of college. Why?!? Just because she’s got their name? She’s suddenly someone you should mention in the first-female-president conversation because she’s their daughter? She’s not accomplished anything.”

  Chelsea still wears the scars of growing up in the White House, and displays them whenever it suits her purposes. In the runup to the presidential reelection of Barack Obama, a calm Chelsea in an animal print dress, with the length of her arms showing and straight hair flipped out, charmed a New York City crowd.

  “She and I actually have something in common,” Chelsea told the crowd, referring to Sandra Fluke, the former Georgetown law student who was criticized after testifying on Capitol Hill about the need for healthcare coverage for contraception. “We both have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh.” The crowd laughed, and participants on the stage—all women—joined in and began to clap.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Chelsea said, reveling. “Yes. I do also believe if you have the right type of enemies you’re doing something correct.” More light laughter.

  “She was thirty, I was thirteen.” The crowd groaned. “It’s true, actually. In 1993, he said, and I’m grateful I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but something like, You may know that the Clintons have a cat ‘Sox’ in the White House, they also have a dog. And then he put a picture of me on the screen.”

  Chelsea began to nod. “And yet thankfully I had grown up in public life. And knew that having thick skin was a survival skill,” she said, then turned, visibly saddened, toward Sandra Fluke.

  “But, Sandra, you have reacted with such nobility to everything that has happened and clearly have chosen to empower yourself over what has happened and not become disempowered by it.”24

  The truth about the once shy and awkward Chelsea Clinton is that as close as she is to Hillary, Chelsea is tip-to-tail her daddy’s little girl. She’s politically attuned and immensely influential in her parents’ decision making—more so, these days, than any other aide around the former president and secretary of state. Indeed, it’s quite possible that there is no one more integral to Hillary Clinton’s decision of whether to run for president than Chelsea herself. That is a scary thought for longtime Clinton supporters. A friend of Paul Begala says the Clinton loyalist has previously expressed his dislike for Chelsea and thinks she is not the sweet girl image she projects.

  A former associate who left ClintonWorld amicably calls Chelsea tremendously coddled and entitled. “It bothers the shit out of me that everyone thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

  This perception, which revised the earlier view of Chelsea as an innocent naïf, was shared by other observers.

  A journalist accompanying Chelsea and Hillary to Italy in July 1994 recalls that the visitors’ section of Pompeii was completely shut down so Chelsea and her mother could have a private visit. That’s the kind of world (in some ways, through no fault of her own) the young woman has grown accustomed to.

  “Nothing seems very authentic,” a close observer says. That may be because her image is managed by a slick, high-powered PR firm in New York, Rubenstein Public Relations, and because Chelsea surrounds herself with a tight circle of loyalists, one more impenetrable than either of her parents’. Like her mother, she can’t seem to let people go. To add to the boundary-less weirdness that is the hallmark of her family, Chelsea’s married ex-boyfriend hangs around as part of her entourage, sometimes attending family functions with her.

  That would be Jeremy Kane, a former White House intern, who dated Chelsea for about a year and a half in college. The fact that she’d date a White House intern has led some to say, “Like father, like daughter,” a clear dig at her father also being engaged romantically with another intern.25 She’d also be linked to Rhodes scholar Ian Klaus, an author of a book on Kurdistan, and even, somewhat outlandishly, to Hollywood actor Ben Affleck. “Chelsea came very close to exiting the White House without a Hollywood controversy on her hands, but when she and her father were mere weeks from leaving office—and the U.S. was captivated by the undecided presidential election—tabloids began circulating rumors that Ms. Clinton had ignited an affair with Hollywood heartthrob Ben Affleck, who had recently ended his relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow,” reported the Daily Beast.26

  It’s perhaps not surprising that Chelsea Clinton has had a series of well-paying jobs, and that doors have opened for her due to her famous name. A sore spot with many observers is her lucrative gig with NBC, which hired her in 2011 for a reported large sum to profile people who are “Making a Difference” through volunteerism in their communities. This didn't sit well with everybody. A former Clinton staffer says, “Think about all the real journalists out there who are struggling, who have been working for ages to do this.”

  Clinton’s biggest feature was an embarrassing interview she conducted with the insurance company GEICO’s mascot—an animated gecko. It resulted in mockery across the Internet, as bloggers derided Chelsea digging up the GEICO gecko’s supposed yearbook photo. The bit was hardly worthy of a journalist, let alone a high-profile correspondent like Chelsea.

  “TV critics have not been impressed with Chelsea Clinton’s reporting skills at NBC. This certainly won’t change after Friday’s Rock Center, wherein the former presidential daughter actually interviewed—wait for it!—the GEICO gecko,” wrote one conservative media critic.27
>
  “For some background—in case you’re actually interested!—the segment was about various commercial personalities such as the Old Spice guy, the ATT guy, and, of course, the GEICO gecko. Great get, huh?” asked the critic, who called Chelsea’s interview style “amateurish” and credited her famous parents and “friends in high places” with getting her “such a plum position.”

  It’s not just Chelsea’s conservative critics—liberals haven’t been too kind either. “[R]ight now, we’re stuck in another awkward Chelsea Clinton phase, a kind of perpetual sheltered adolescence, still getting to know you after all these years. And who wants to watch that?” a BuzzFeed reporter dared, reporting that she’s not well liked or highly regarded in the NBC family.

  “The days of Chelsea having it both ways are over. It’s one thing to want your total privacy, and stay totally private; it’s another thing to want your total privacy while reaping all the rewards and privileges that contemporary celebrity has to offer,” the BuzzFeed reporter announced.28

  Following her parents’ lead, Chelsea chose a partner around whom rumors and conspiracies seem to endlessly circle. In the summer of 2010, at the age of thirty, she married Marc Mezvinsky. The two were friends at Stanford, and they don’t appear to have started dating until many years later. It’s likely their somewhat similar family lives played a role in bringing them together.

  Like Chelsea, Marc—whom the New York Post called “youthfully dashing,” with “wavy hair” and a “lanky frame”—is the child of Democratic politicians.29 His mother is Marjorie Margolies (formerly Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky), a one-term Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania, who, it’s often said, lost her reelection campaign because she was a bigger fan of President Clinton than the rest of her district. (She voted for Clinton’s tax increases, against the wishes of her constituents.) Marc’s father is Edward M. Mezvinsky, a two-term Democratic congressman from Iowa who pleaded guilty to stealing $10 million from investors and tried to use his son’s relationship with Chelsea Clinton to ease prosecutors away from pursuing his case. It didn’t work, and the elder Mezvinsky spent five years in prison.30

  Marc Mezvinsky is an investment banker himself, and started his own fund in April 2012 with the help of Clinton benefactors. “He is using [his father-in-law] to go to conferences or dinners or lunches with potential investors” and “hitting them up to invest in [Marc’s] funds.” If Doug Band could be marginalized, there would be a potential vacancy for a new surrogate son: Chelsea’s husband, Marc.

  In the fall of 2011, Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and Marc met in Little Rock to dedicate the Bill Clinton Presidential Park Bridge. Completed with an infusion of $10 million from the Clinton Foundation, the bridge was an obvious play on one of the former president’s best-known lines during his 1996 reelection campaign: “I want to build a bridge to the 21st century.”

  As the quartet was about to make their way before the cameras at the dedication ceremony, Chelsea stopped and turned to her husband, with whom she’d celebrated her first anniversary the previous June.

  “Stay here,” she told him, urging him out of the camera shot. “You’re not a Clinton.”

  Chelsea is said to be an adherent to the view espoused by many other senior Democrats—and advanced by Bill and his aides—that he is a changed man now. In his midsixties and hoping to be a grandpa, the lecherous Bill of the 1990s is a thing of old. A former aide tells me Chelsea is oblivious to the truth that her father “is still fucking around.”

  Veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum once recalled a moment in the 1990s when Clinton brought a woman to the home of prominent D.C. socialite Pamela Harriman and spent the night with her. “Pamela was hardly a prude,” Shrum noted, “but she was angry with Clinton; it was reckless.”31

  By 2013, Shrum was a believer in the Bill the Redeemed storyline. “I think the recklessness is the past,” he says to me. “I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

  Throughout Barack Obama’s first term, as Hillary Clinton maintained her statesmanlike persona and subsisted on a government salary—as secretary of state, she earned $186,600 per year—Bill’s money-raising efforts continued. His speeches were well received and well compensated. (He even brought George W. Bush in on the act, who throughout his own presidency had fretted about not having enough money.) His foundation was flourishing. And now he and his right-hand man Doug Band had a new moneymaking scheme—a company called Teneo. It caught Chelsea Clinton’s attention.

  Sometime before the 2012 presidential election, Band approached Clinton with the idea of a multifaceted and comprehensive consulting business that could well make him, and by extension his patron Clinton, a ton of money. Along with Band was the man who would be Teneo’s chairman and CEO, Declan Kelly.

  Kelly previously had served as the U.S. economic envoy to Northern Ireland, appointed to that position by Hillary Clinton in 2009. He was born in Tipperary, Ireland, and his brother Alan served in the European Parliament representing his home country. (Alan is now minister of state at the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in Ireland, where he’s a member of the Labour party.) A good-looking, dark-haired Irishman, Declan favored pinstriped suits, accented with a white-collared and -cuffed dress shirt.

  A former colleague, who compared him to a snake oil salesman, says, “He was amazing to watch. Declan was the best salesperson I ever saw in my life.”

  The idea for Teneo was to have Fortune 400 companies pay large monthly stipends in exchange for access to Band, Clinton, and their massive international network. The group would “consult” with the companies, offer strategic advice, and help them overcome issues in various countries across the globe. That was how it was billed.

  I asked a former Teneo employee what these companies actually received. “Nothing,” says the employee. “There was this sort of implicit promise of access to Clinton or Clinton knowledge or people who are close to him or whatever. And that they did sell. But there was something really seedy about it.” (Defenders of Teneo would say that the president was already for sale—available to come to events or speak at conferences for the right price—and that the consulting company wasn’t necessary for the former president’s own multimillion-dollar business of selling himself.)

  Nonetheless, the Clinton allies used their connections with senior executives at companies like Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical to bring in millions. And there were other companies, too—Bank of America, Harrah’s, Hess, UBS Wealth Management.

  Clinton was of course the key to Teneo’s success. “The two needed the president,” a source says. “It was he who they were selling to their corporate clients. Or, more precisely, it was their proximity to power—President Clinton, and his wife, who was then secretary of state—and their own Rolodexes, which were a natural extension of the work they had done over the years for the Clintons.”

  Because of his wife’s position, Bill wasn’t going to receive an actual piece of the company. That raised too many perception questions even for him. Instead he had a contract.

  The contract was worth $3.5 million, a handsome fee even for the ex-president. “Everything the president did for Teneo he got paid for,” says a former Teneo employee. He would attend events where there were a hundred CEOs or a hundred big investors coming together. And with his speaking fee, Clinton would make hundreds of thousands of dollars just for an hour or two schmoozing with his corporate friends.

  “I bet Dow was paying close to a million a month,” says a source, a former Clinton staffer. “And Coke probably, too, because Coke, when they [signed on] they got rid of all their other consultants.” They had contracts with at least four consultant companies and pushed all that business to Teneo.

  The Manhattan-based Teneo built an impressive board of advisors, including former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Harvey Pitt, former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins, a collection of loaded investment managers like Karim Shariff, and prestigious academics like Georgetown professor Victor Cha.32<
br />
  There was only one problem that might stop the money from rolling in. At their preliminary meeting with Clinton to get his go-ahead on Teneo, the group was joined by two other guests who had until then stayed largely out of the family business: Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky. They saw the promise of Teneo. They wanted in.

  Chelsea, with Marc and her dad by her side, asked Band and Kelly for an equity stake in the company.

  Band and Kelly demurred. As much as they might personally like Chelsea, they thought it would be a bad idea. Teneo was going to have offices around the world, in São Paulo, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Beijing, Dubai, Moscow, Brussels, London, and Dublin. It would raise too many questions to give a piece of the company to someone who was actually the daughter of the current secretary of state.

  “They weren’t happy about that,” a source close to the situation says, referring to Chelsea and Marc.

  Doug Band was clearly on his way out of Clinton Inc., but he already wanted to transition to a different kind of relationship with the former president. The business was an easy out—a way to maintain a relationship with the Clintons and maximize the network he had developed, but without having to travel around with the former president and be his direct aide.

  And Chelsea wanted in. Going from not caring about the foundation and refusing to take part in foundation-related events before the 2008 presidential campaign, Chelsea had come around to seeing how useful it might be to her. And that no matter how much she might have wanted her own path in life, she’d always and forever be the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

  By 2012, the combination of Band’s business dealings and brash self-promotion was causing trouble for the one man he couldn’t afford to alienate—the former president on whom everything built by the former bagman depended. There were reports that the Obama campaign—from whom the Clintons were looking for an alliance—hated him, that Hillary was worried about perceived conflicts between clients of Band’s consulting company and the State Department, and that Chelsea had concerns about conflicts of interest between Band’s business interests and her father’s foundation. As a friend of Bill Clinton told the New Republic, “the last thing anyone wants is noise.”