Will Bill's dough make trouble for Hillary?

Some big donors to the former president's philanthropy also donate to Hillary's campaign. His private fundraising could be costly to a next Clinton White House.

By Mark Benjamin

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Oct. 11, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- If Bill Clinton goes back to the White House with a new title in January 2009, there will be more than one fundraising juggernaut living there. Since leaving office in 2001, the former president has vacuumed in hundreds of millions of dollars for his William J. Clinton Foundation. Though the former president has declined to reveal the identities of his individual donors, public records reviewed by Salon reveal a partial picture of corporate foundations and the foundations of a network of wealthy individuals that have long fueled the Clinton money machine. Some of those same individuals are now among the top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Bill Clinton's profile and political power would, of course, make him an unprecedented spouse to a sitting president. He could wield significant sway over policy, perhaps becoming a transformative figure like Dick Cheney, who dramatically expanded the influence of the vice president's role. That prospect raises the question of whether Bill Clinton's financial activity, and a partial lack of transparency about it to date, could become a political liability for a Hillary Clinton administration.

Laws designed to minimize real or perceived influence peddling limit the activities of a sitting president. But campaign and election law attorneys say nothing prohibits Bill Clinton from continuing to accept big checks made out to him or his foundation, even if his wife is elected president. "I don't know of any law that would restrict that," said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington. "The spouse is not exactly a federal employee."

Experts say Bill Clinton's role as first gentleman would be uncharted territory with regard to managing real or perceived conflicts of interest. "We have not had to confront these issues because we have not had spouses of presidents who have had independent professional lives," said Jan Baran, the former general counsel for the Republican National Committee. "This guy is a former president. That is unique."

Bill Clinton has said publicly he would keep raising money for his foundation if his wife were elected president. As a former president, Clinton has also padded his personal bank account with more than $41 million in speaking fees from appearances for major corporations and other organizations.

Both Clinton's foundation and his wife's campaign were difficult to engage for a response to this article. A Bill Clinton spokesman, who did not want his name used, said he did not know if his boss would continue to make paid speeches for his own income if his wife were in the White House.

But if Bill Clinton raises and makes money in 2009 the way he has in recent years, it will be at a blistering pace. He started his William J. Clinton Foundation in 1997 to fund the construction of his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark. But the organization has since expanded to encompass an umbrella of nonprofit initiatives to fight HIV, assist developing countries and combat climate change. Donations have increased exponentially. He has accepted hundreds of millions in donations to date; tax records for 2005, the most recent available, show Clinton raised more than $80 million for his foundation in that year alone.

Foundations are not required by law to reveal the identities of donors, and the former president has resisted showing where the money for his is coming from. In late September, Clinton announced that if his wife were elected president, he would "feel constrained to have some greater disclosure" on prospective gifts made to his foundation after the 2008 elections. But past donors and donors making contributions up until the election would remain secret. Clinton has argued that foundations linked to other presidents enjoy similar anonymity. "Now, the people that have already given me money don't think I should disclose it, unless there is some conflict of which I am aware, and there's not," Clinton told reporters at a press conference Sept. 27, during an invitation-only meeting of his Clinton Global Initiative in New York. "Because a lot of people gave me money with the understanding that they could give anonymously, and if they gave publicly then they would become the target for every other politician in America to hit on them for the rest of their lives," he said. "And some of them are Republicans, and they may not want anybody to know they gave me money."

Tax records of foundations affiliated with wealthy individuals and corporations shed light on donors who have given the Clinton Foundation nearly $36 million over the past several years. This data excludes donations made directly by individuals to the Clinton Foundation, which remain private.

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