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Hillary's State Department and the Insider Who Used His Ties to Build a Consulting Giant
How a Clinton Insider Used His Ties to Build a Consulting Giant
Hillary gave a special State Department post to an ex-fundraiser — even as he was laying the groundwork for a global firm with ties to her husband called Teneo.
By Rachael Bade
04/13/16 05:56 AM EDT
When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state she personally sought out a man named Declan Kelly to be her economic envoy to Northern Ireland, giving her 41-year-old former fundraiser a special status outside normal diplomatic channels.
“Yeah! Is he now official? Can I call him? Can I ask him to start?” she wrote in an Aug. 28, 2009 email to her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.
By some measures, Kelly was a bargain for the government. The Ireland-born businessman refused a salary, hired five staffers on his own dime and pushed for U.S. companies to invest in the once-troubled region, a diplomatic priority for Clinton.
But while serving as Clinton’s special envoy, reaching out to global corporations for those investments, he was also working for two of them as a private consultant — earning about $2.4 million from Dow Chemical, a longtime client of his and one of the firms that participated in Clinton’s Ireland initiative.
It was also during this time period that Kelly and Doug Band, a close aide to former President Bill Clinton, were preparing to launch a global consulting business that would soon become a well-known and controversial success story. Their new venture, Teneo Holdings, would go on to employ numerous Hillary Clinton associates, including her closest confidante, Huma Abedin, and, for a time, Bill Clinton as “honorary chairman,” giving clients rare access to the couple and their network of world leaders.
The fact that Kelly and Band were laying the groundwork for their enterprise while Kelly was working for the State Department, reported here for the first time, represents a fresh illustration of the blurring of the lines between Hillary Clinton’s political network and her State Department that critics have long noted. And it shows how one enterprising fundraiser was able to insinuate himself into Clinton's inner circle and then built a 500-person, multinational consulting firm whose value, at least at first, was greatly enhanced by its founders’ closeness to the Clintons.
Manhattan-based Teneo has been a center of palace intrigue for years because of its proximity to the former first family. And in its early days, Teneo directly benefited the couple themselves, though the company emphasizes that it no longer has those ties.
With Bill Clinton serving in the paid position of honorary chairman, and Hillary as secretary of state, Teneo initially billed itself as a one-stop shop for “C-suite consulting,” a blend of public relations advice for CEOs and more technical investor relations work. Corporate executives paid $250,000 a month — sometimes more — for consulting and assistance. They also, in some cases, got to hobnob with a former president. The firm forged a mutually beneficial relationship with the Clinton Global Initiative, the fancy annual Clinton Foundation event starring the former president and other world leaders. The New York Times and The New Republic first reported three years ago how the philanthropic gathering provided an ideal nexus for Teneo to both recruit new clients and enhance the visibility of existing clients by getting them speaking roles.
Eight former employees and other sources with knowledge of the start-up or close to the Clintons told POLITICO that many Teneo clients received exposure to Bill Clinton, invitations to salon dinners filled with D.C. power players, or meetings at CGI with foreign leaders in the years immediately after the company's founding. They also said a key element of Kelly and Band’s pitch to new clients was donating to the foundation or joining CGI to “raise your leadership profile.”
This Investigative Report is a very long read with twists and turns...:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/teneo-final-221807
Hillary gave a special State Department post to an ex-fundraiser — even as he was laying the groundwork for a global firm with ties to her husband called Teneo.
By Rachael Bade
04/13/16 05:56 AM EDT
When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state she personally sought out a man named Declan Kelly to be her economic envoy to Northern Ireland, giving her 41-year-old former fundraiser a special status outside normal diplomatic channels.
“Yeah! Is he now official? Can I call him? Can I ask him to start?” she wrote in an Aug. 28, 2009 email to her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.
By some measures, Kelly was a bargain for the government. The Ireland-born businessman refused a salary, hired five staffers on his own dime and pushed for U.S. companies to invest in the once-troubled region, a diplomatic priority for Clinton.
But while serving as Clinton’s special envoy, reaching out to global corporations for those investments, he was also working for two of them as a private consultant — earning about $2.4 million from Dow Chemical, a longtime client of his and one of the firms that participated in Clinton’s Ireland initiative.
It was also during this time period that Kelly and Doug Band, a close aide to former President Bill Clinton, were preparing to launch a global consulting business that would soon become a well-known and controversial success story. Their new venture, Teneo Holdings, would go on to employ numerous Hillary Clinton associates, including her closest confidante, Huma Abedin, and, for a time, Bill Clinton as “honorary chairman,” giving clients rare access to the couple and their network of world leaders.
The fact that Kelly and Band were laying the groundwork for their enterprise while Kelly was working for the State Department, reported here for the first time, represents a fresh illustration of the blurring of the lines between Hillary Clinton’s political network and her State Department that critics have long noted. And it shows how one enterprising fundraiser was able to insinuate himself into Clinton's inner circle and then built a 500-person, multinational consulting firm whose value, at least at first, was greatly enhanced by its founders’ closeness to the Clintons.
Manhattan-based Teneo has been a center of palace intrigue for years because of its proximity to the former first family. And in its early days, Teneo directly benefited the couple themselves, though the company emphasizes that it no longer has those ties.
With Bill Clinton serving in the paid position of honorary chairman, and Hillary as secretary of state, Teneo initially billed itself as a one-stop shop for “C-suite consulting,” a blend of public relations advice for CEOs and more technical investor relations work. Corporate executives paid $250,000 a month — sometimes more — for consulting and assistance. They also, in some cases, got to hobnob with a former president. The firm forged a mutually beneficial relationship with the Clinton Global Initiative, the fancy annual Clinton Foundation event starring the former president and other world leaders. The New York Times and The New Republic first reported three years ago how the philanthropic gathering provided an ideal nexus for Teneo to both recruit new clients and enhance the visibility of existing clients by getting them speaking roles.
Eight former employees and other sources with knowledge of the start-up or close to the Clintons told POLITICO that many Teneo clients received exposure to Bill Clinton, invitations to salon dinners filled with D.C. power players, or meetings at CGI with foreign leaders in the years immediately after the company's founding. They also said a key element of Kelly and Band’s pitch to new clients was donating to the foundation or joining CGI to “raise your leadership profile.”
This Investigative Report is a very long read with twists and turns...:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/teneo-final-221807
9 replies
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This is ridiculous. This is BRIBERY 101.
They both belong in JAIL!!!!!! And they call themselves Democrats. How embarrassing. And how sickening. 
No blurring of lines. The lines of propriety did not exist. Nor, in my opinion, did the lines separating legal from illegal.
I can't understand why all this has been ignored. There were investigative reports out there before she declared and yet...they got little or no attention. She still ran and people seem to think that she will beat Trump...so lets let Bill & Hillary back in Their because they are the "Lesser of Two Evils?"
