Adding to the Clintons’ discomfiture following a close scrutiny of the family’s charitable foundation this election season, hacked e-mails released by Wikileaks cite a former top aide as claiming that he and another Clinton ally had helped secure more than $50 million for former President Bill Clinton even while raising money for the foundation.
Citing a hacked 12-page memo, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Douglas Band, the former top aide, has described how he and Declan Kelly, an Irish-American businessman and ally of the Clintons, secured “more than $50 million in for-profit activity” for Bill Clinton by way of large speaking fees and other paid work.
In the November 2011 memo, Band has also spoken of how the two of them also arranged another $66 million in potential future payments for Clinton through speaking and other engagements, the paper reported. He has spoken of having worked to obtain “in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like”.
The report comes on top of the “pay-to-play” allegations levelled by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in respect of Clinton Foundation donors during her stint as Secretary of State.
The Clinton campaign has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of any of the hacked emails put out by Wikileaks on a daily basis over the past several days. Hillary Clinton herself has been blaming Russia for the massive hacking of emails from the account of her campaign chief John Podesta in a bid to influence the presidential election in favour of Trump.
Band had written the memo to a law firm that was reviewing the Clinton Foundation’s activities and his own links. The issue came to the fore when Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, sought the review as she was worried that Band was “hustling business” for his consulting firm, Teneo Holdings, at the Clinton Global Initiative.
The potentially-damaging Band memo along with other hacked emails was put out by Wikileaks on Wednesday – a day when Trump appeared to be narrowing his huge gap with Clinton in at least one national poll. Fox News reported that Clinton now just had a 3 per cent lead over Trump (44-41), down from the 6 per cent in its last week’s poll. And a Bloomberg poll said Trump now leads Clinton by 2 points in Florida, a must-win battleground State for Trump.
Trying to bounce back, Trump unveiled what is being regarded as a belated plan exclusively for African-Americans. Called a “New Deal for Black America”, it outlines proposals to revitalize impoverished urban areas. Besides tax incentives for inner cities, the plan promises new micro-loans for African-Americans to start companies and hire workers. He also pledged to remove criminal gangs from inner cities.
“I will be your greatest champion. I will never ever take the African American community for granted. Never, ever,” Trump said at a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina – another battleground State that he must win.
Hillary Clinton, speaking at her own election rally in Tampa, painted Trump as the “poster boy” for everything that is wrong with the American economy.