Part of this diary was a comment and it was suggested I make it a diary. If it gets posted it will be my first because I type so slowly there has always been another one on whatever my topic.
This is not meant as a hit diary, I am not a concern troll but I am reporting something that has already hit and there is already cause for concern.
All candidates had some finance related possible scandals in waiting. Obama's was Rezko and it had been looked into for over a year and unlikely to be a major issue for November. I saw several brewing for the Clintons that were not as out in the open but assumed they knew how to deal with them promptly.
More after the jump
Then came the debate when Clinton threw Rezko at Obama. Splash. Now he was muddy.
My thought was "You did not go there"
But since she did go there my assumption was that her questionable financial issues had been cleaned up so I took a look. My heart sunk.
I am posting this today because in the current Newsweek some of these "thorny issues" are covered with pictures and text about the big three. NY Times have a cover story about one of those 3 today, Giustra as noted in the diary NYT breaks 'Borat-Gate'
I'll cover another of the stories: the Clinton connection to infoUSA and Vinod Gupta
The article from the Feb 4, 2008 Issue NEWSWEEK is Here an F.O.B., There an F.O.B. By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
They have a few paragraphs about the company the diary will discuss
Bill's business deals with other friends have also drawn scrutiny. According to Hillary's disclosure forms, he is a consultant to InfoUSA, a data-processing and marketing firm in Omaha. The company, which has paid him $3.3 million in consulting fees, is owned by Vinod Gupta, a billionaire who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Clintons' campaigns and contributed $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. Gupta has given the Clintons the use of his private jet, and has accompanied them on vacation. When Bill Clinton was president, Gupta was a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Gupta's generosity to the Clintons led to a revolt among some stockholders in his company. They are suing InfoUSA, alleging Gupta wasted $900,000 in company funds flying the Clintons around the world and paying the former president huge fees for little work. Neither Gupta nor InfoUSA responded to requests for comment. But last June, Gupta praised Clinton's work for the company. "He helps us meet some of the right people," he told the Omaha World-Herald. "In many speeches, he has mentioned InfoUSA by name." Gupta said that his payments to Clinton weren't wasted. "We get back many times over what is spent on Bill. I would say over the last seven years, easily over $40 million."
Clinton may have another reason to regret his relationship with Gupta. Last year, members of Congress—including Barack Obama—pressed the Federal Trade Commission to investigate allegations that InfoUSA sold personal and consumer data about senior citizens to crooked telemarketers. The FTC would not comment on whether it's investigating; Bill's spokesperson says the former president has "not been following these allegations ... If these allegations are true, the appropriate individuals should be held accountable."
I had written my post about this issue before I saw it in Newsweek but I suspect we'll soon hear more about it, possibly about several. As Newsweek notes Gupta is a donor to the Clinton foundation and the finances of the foundation is bound to bring questions regarding Senator Clinton's campaign. December 20, 2007 article by the NY Times entitled In Charity and Politics, Clinton Donors Overlap explores that.
Over the last decade, former President Bill Clinton has raised more than $500 million for his foundation, allowing him to build a glass-and-steel presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and burnish his image as an impresario of global philanthropy. The foundation has closely guarded the identities of its donors — including one who gave $31.3 million last year.
Now, the secrecy surrounding the William J. Clinton Foundation has become a campaign issue as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination with her husband as a prime source of strategy and star power. Some of her rivals argue that donors could use presidential foundations to circumvent campaign finance laws intended to limit political influence.
Mr. Clinton himself echoed those concerns this fall when he pledged to make public future donors if Mrs. Clinton was elected president. While disclosure is not legally required, failure to do so, Mr. Clinton said, would raise "all these questions about whether people would try to win favor with her by giving money to me."
Even so, past donors should remain private, he insisted, "unless there is some conflict of which I am aware, and there is not."
Their examination reveals some potential conflicts and explores several. I'll just show the summary and go on.
The New York Times has compiled the first comprehensive list of 97 donors who gave or pledged a total of $69 million for the Clinton presidential library in the final years of the Clinton administration. The examination found that while some $1 million contributors were longtime Clinton friends, others were seeking policy changes from the administration. Two pledged $1 million each while they or their companies were under investigation by the Justice Department.
Other donations came from supporters who had been ensnared in campaign finance scandals surrounding Mr. Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign.
In raising record sums for her campaign, Mrs. Clinton has tapped many of the foundation’s donors. At least two dozen have become "Hillraisers," each bundling $100,000 or more for her presidential bid. The early library donors, combined with their families and political action committees, have contributed at least $784,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate and presidential coffers.
The foundation and Mrs. Clinton’s political campaigns have been intertwined in other ways.
We know some real exploration will be done with even the limited information they have.
But the troubles with the Mr. Gupta and infoUSA started well before the article.
From May 26, 2007
Suit Sheds Light on Clintons’ Ties to a Benefactor
The company, infoUSA, one of the nation’s largest brokers of information on consumers, paid $146,866 to ferry the Clintons, Mr. Gupta and others to Acapulco and back, court records show. During the next four years, infoUSA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign events.
Those expenses are cited in a lawsuit filed late last year in a Delaware court by angry shareholders of infoUSA, who assert that Mr. Gupta wasted the company’s money trying "to ingratiate himself" with his high-profile guests.
The disclosure of the trips and the consulting fees is just a small part of a broader complaint about the way Mr. Gupta has managed his company. But for the former president, and for the senator who would become president, it offers significant new details about their relationship with an unusually generous benefactor whose business practices have lately come under scrutiny.
The article does not accuse the Senator (Or the ex-president) of wrong doing
Aides to Mrs. Clinton were at pains to distance her from infoUSA, pointing out that she had sponsored legislation that would strengthen privacy rights of consumers. As for the flights on infoUSA’s plane, Phil Singer, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, said the senator "complied with all the relevant ethics rules" on accepting private air travel.
Ethics rules for senators and candidates require only that the recipient of a flight make reimbursement at a rate equal to that of a first-class ticket, a long-derided loophole that allows special interests to provide de facto gifts of expensive private air travel, which generally costs far more than commercial fares. Mr. Singer would not say what Mrs. Clinton paid for her flights.
Mr. Gupta has long been a loyal fund-raisers raising hundreds of thousands over the years as well as donating $1 million to the foundation. He was one of the major donors who was a Lincoln Bedroom guest in the Clinton White House and was nominated for minor ambassadorships which Mr. Gupta declined. The article describes some of the flights and financial relationship.
The New York Times was not the only paper to report on the issue in the spring of 2007. To quit picking on them I'll show a follow up article by the Washington Post in November 2007. SEC Opens Investigation of Company Headed by Key Supporter of Clintons
The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into InfoUSA, a Nebraska company that used corporate funds to fly Hillary Rodham Clinton around the country, and one of only two companies to put Bill Clinton on its payroll after he left the White House.
Most of what is described is money paid to or for Bill Clinton except for the flights that both Clinton's had taken over the past four years that the Post values at $900,000 worth of travel.
They aren't named as defendants in the lawsuit or accused of wrongdoing but the suit is about money spent on them and the ways that Gupta wasted money.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign declined comment last night, referring reporters instead to a Delaware court's ruling in August that allowed the shareholder lawsuit to proceed against InfoUSA on two of the five original allegations. Among the allegations dismissed by the court was one asserting that Clinton's consulting contract was a waste of money.
<snip>
The court, however, said it was possible that shareholders could make a legal issue out of the Clinton flights.
That was the last thing I had read about this issue before I heard Rezko and searched again to make sure this had been cleared up. Not quite Bloomberg News reports onDecember 30, 2007
InfoUSA wants halt to suit over Clintons
OK...which way to go now.
A little more on infoUSA, some things they have done with that info
Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist
InfoUSA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."
A long and very sad article filled with details of the investigation and the sad stories of some of the vulnerable victims who lost everything.
Obviously we can't blame the Clintons for the behavior of that companies bad employees but the issue is tied in time. This article came out in May 2007.
From a July 2007 article we learn they don't just help bilk the vulnerable
Clinton Backer’s Ties to Powerful Cut Both Ways
Some of the benefits to Mr. Gupta are tangible. The Democrats paid infoUSA $5 million over the last six years for computer consulting and data services (the Republicans paid it $6 million for data), and the company was granted the rights to resell lists of donors to the Democratic Party, as well as to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign, Mr. Clinton’s presidential library and the Clintons’ legal defense fund.
This is a twist on polls noted in the article
In a move that is emblematic of his mixing of political and business interests, Mr. Gupta signed Mr. Clinton as a consultant after he left office. Over the years, he appointed Mr. Kerrey, Mr. Pressler, Mr. McAuliffe and Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, to the boards of his companies, and gave jobs to Mr. Kerrey’s brother, William, and Ms. Pelosi’s son, Paul.
The funds have also questioned Mr. Gupta’s decision to pay a substantial premium last December to acquire the Opinion Research Corporation, which has done opinion surveys for CNN since April 2006. In January, CNN began using Opinion Research for its presidential polling, leading conservative bloggers to ask if Mr. Gupta, as a Clinton supporter, should have influence over CNN’s polling.
Mr. Gupta called Opinion Research "a natural fit" for his business, adding that he had no involvement with its polling operations. A review of its poll results over the last six months found them mostly in line with other campaign surveys.
Now this seems to be part of the infamous
opposition-research memorandum circulated by Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Since then, Mrs. Clinton’s aides have said Mr. Gupta is not a significant figure in her campaign, and a financial disclosure report filed in May showed that Mr. Clinton had forfeited infoUSA stock options potentially worth several hundred thousand dollars.
They are in the news now just because Database marketer infoUSA Inc. is buying Direct Media Inc but even that little business blurb was mostly filled with the suggestion of scandal.
InfoUSA is currently faced with a shareholder lawsuit and Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The shareholder lawsuit claims the company misspent millions, some of it on Bill and Hillary Clinton. The lawsuit questions why InfoUSA founder Vin Gupta used private corporate jets to fly the Clintons on business, personal and campaign trips, why Gupta gave Bill Clinton a $3.3 million consulting contract and why the company paid for luxuries Gupta enjoyed.
The SEC has requested InfoUSA produce spending-related documents and documentation related to some trading in the company's securities. InfoUSA formed a committee late last month in response to the lawsuit and investigation
Just one more thing that infoUSA has done from ABC news November 19, 2007
Clinton Library Sells Secret Donor List
Three years after the William J. Clinton Presidential Library opened its doors, the list of donors who helped the former president build his $165 million complex remains a secret from the public.
Yet the Blotter on ABCNews.com has learned that the Clinton Foundation sold portions of the list through a data company headed by a longtime friend and donor.
"The fact that they've sold the list and then turned around and said that these names must be kept anonymous completely undercuts their argument," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group that tracks the influence of money in politics.
An employee of Walter Karl, a subsidiary of the data company InfoUSA, told ABCNews.com that the company made a list of more than 38,000 donors to the Clinton presidential library available for sale to foundations and other nonprofit groups from June 2006 to May 2007. A spokesman for the company would not say how the profits from the sale of the partial list were distributed.
No one has to tell me this doesn't prove anything or prove that any laws were broken or that I didn't tie all this together well. An investigative reporter might do that soon.
And I don't have to tell anyone that these will sound ugly come autumn if she is the nominee. I'm not sure why Obama didn't throw these names back at her when she threw Rezko at him but we can be sure the republicans won't show that restraint.
Senator Clinton's campaign finance are tied up in these
but Bill Clinton is the bigger part of these. That won't make much difference when it comes to how it affects the presidential race.
I wish these had come up and been addressed much sooner or much later. I doubt these stories will affect her chances in the nomination but also doubt it can be cleared up before the general, largely because of the closed donor list of the ex-presidents institute tied with the campaign which demands transparency.