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Meet the lobbyists, donors and bundlers behind Hillary's $157 million juggernaut
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=post&forum=1251<The superlobbyist brother of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, he runs Podesta Group — a powerhouse firm for defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Bechtel), pharmaceutical and health insurance giants (Merck and Blue Cross-Blue Shield) and banking and private equity firms (Well Fargo, Credit Suisse Group, KKR). Podesta has used his D.C. mansion, famously decorated with expensive modern art, to host a Clinton fundraiser (offering fine Italian cooking by him and his brother) as well as a book party for Clinton super-PAC attack dog David Brock (co-hosted by Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias and Clinton email pal Sidney Blumenthal.) Another branch of Podesta’s portfolio: foreign governments, including several — Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Burma and the Maldives — accused by the State Department of human rights abuses. A new senior partner working on the firm’s new $1.68 million a year Saudi account: David Adams, former assistant secretary for legislative affairs while Clinton was secretary of state.>
<Two of his McGuireWoods colleagues, Andrew Smith and former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, are also bundlers who have raised $240,000 for the Clinton campaign while lobbying for clients that include Smithfield Foods (now owned by the Chinese-based Shuanghui Group) and Dandong Port Group, a Hong Kong-registered port and grain importing firm owned by secretive Chinese billionaire Wenliang Wang, who has donated $2 million to the Clinton Foundation.>
<After serving as Hillary Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, Nides returned through the Wall Street revolving door to become vice chairman of Morgan Stanley. A top Clinton bundler, he has helped raise $205,198 from the investment bank’s executives and employees, including donations from the firm’s chief operating officer, its chiefs of fixed income and wealth management, two managing directors and four members of its board of directors. Morgan Stanley, which last year agreed to pay a $2.6 billion fine to settle U.S. government claims over its role in the 2008 financial crisis, has donated $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation. It also paid Hillary Clinton $225,000 for a speech in 2013, two and a half months afar she stepped down as secretary of state.>
<He is the chairman of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street colossus that last month agreed to pay a $5.1 billion fine to settle a Justice Department investigation for its role in marketing subprime mortgage bonds in the runup to the 2008 financial crisis. Among the Goldman executives who helped Blankfein’s firm profit from the crash: Donald Mullen, the former chief of its credit department, who last year made a $1 million donation to Clinton’s super-PAC, Priorities USA Action. “Sounds like we will make some serious money,” Mullen wrote in an email in the fall of 2007, after learning the subprime mortgage market was about to crash, according to a 2011 Senate report. The firm has also been the single biggest source of funds for Hillary Clinton’s post-government speaking career, paying her $625,000 for three speeches since she stepped down as secretary of state in 2012.>
<Goldman Sachs’ ties to the Clintons have been personal and political: Goldman’s executives and employees have contributed $750,000 to Clinton’s political campaigns, including $100,616 to this year’s run. The firm itself has donated at least $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and paid $1.2 million to Bill Clinton for speeches dating back to 2001. Blankfein, who has described himself as a friend of Hillary Clinton, has lent a helping financial hand to the Clinton family: He (along with two other former Goldman executives) is among the investors in Eaglevale Partners, the hedge fund founded in 2011 by Marc Mezvinsky, husband of Chelsea Clinton, and the former secretary’s son in law.>
<An insight into Soros’ thinking was revealed in a State Department email in which a Clinton ally described a conversation in which Soros said “he has been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy” and that he regretted backing then-Sen. Barack Obama over her in 2008. >
And there is so much more in the article, these are only some lowlights.
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