What Were The Sources Of Money For Hilliary's Take Over Of The Democrat Party?
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Book Guild
Inside Hillary Clinton's Undercover Takeover of the DNC
When I was asked to run the Autonomous Party after the Russians hacked our emails, I stumbled onto a shocking truth about the Clinton campaign.
Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.
I had promised Bernie when I took the captain of the Democratic National Commission after the convention that I would go to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton's team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I'd had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a calendar month or so before, based on the leaked emails. Just who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
So I followed the coin. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had non been the almost active chair in fundraising at a fourth dimension when President Barack Obama's neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary'southward campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party's debt and put information technology on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.
Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn't been very interested in controlling the political party—she allow Clinton's headquarters in Brooklyn practice as it desired then she didn't have to inform the party officers how bad the state of affairs was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.
By September 7, the 24-hour interval I called Bernie, I had plant my proof and it bankrupt my eye.
***
The Saturday morning time afterward the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief fiscal officer of Hillary's campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Political party was broke and $2 million in debt.
"What?" I screamed. "I am an officer of the political party and they've been telling us everything is fine and they were raising coin with no problems."
That wasn't true, he said. Officials from Hillary'south campaign had taken a look at the DNC's books. Obama left the party $24 meg in debt—$xv million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors subsequently the 2012 entrada—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama's campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the entrada) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $x one thousand thousand, and had placed the party on an allowance.
If I didn't know about this, I causeless that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie's way. In my feel she didn't come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let the states know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us nearly the hacking only minutes earlier the Washington Post broke the news.
On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had bundled.
"No! That tin can't be true!" I said. "The political party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers."
"Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?" I asked. "I don't know how Debbie relates to the officers," Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary'southward campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every calendar month to run into its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $ii,700 directly to a presidential campaign. Simply the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party's national committee.
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional cheque for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $x,000 to each of the 32 states' parties who were function of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would exist deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly afterwards that. Money in the battleground states unremarkably stayed in that land, simply all the other states funneled that money direct to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.
"Wait," I said. "That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You're telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?"
Gary said the campaign had to do information technology or the party would collapse.
"That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie," he explained, referring to entrada director Robby Mook. "Information technology was to sustain the DNC. We sent the political party nearly $20 1000000 from September until the convention, and more to ready for the election."
"What's the burn rate, Gary?" I asked. "How much money do nosotros need every month to fund the political party?"
The fire rate was $three.v million to $4 million a month, he said.
I gasped. I had a pretty good sense of the DNC'due south operations after having served equally acting chair five years before. Dorsum and then the monthly expenses were half that. What had happened? The party chair unremarkably shrinks the staff betwixt presidential election campaigns, simply Debbie had chosen not to exercise that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama'southward consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.
When we hung up, I was livid. Not at Gary, but at this mess I had inherited. I knew that Debbie had outsourced a lot of the management of the party and had not been the greatest at fundraising. I would not exist that kind of chair, fifty-fifty if I was just an acting chair. Did they think I would just be a surrogate for them, get on the road and rouse upwards the crowds? I was going to manage this party the best I could and try to make it better, even if Brooklyn did non like this. Information technology would be weeks before I would fully understand the financial shenanigans that were keeping the political party on life back up.
***
Correct effectually the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary's campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving united states of america with very piffling to support down-ballot races. A Pol story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through u.s.a. the summer earlier, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild "the party from the ground upwards … when our state parties are strong, we win. That's what will happen."
Nevertheless the states kept less than half of 1 per centum of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary'south campaign was property, simply as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in Baronial. When the Politico story described this organization as "essentially … money laundering" for the Clinton entrada, Hillary's people were outraged at being defendant of doing something shady. Bernie'due south people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.
I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did non desire to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to prove me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but at that place was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other manner.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, I at last institute the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement betwixt the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the erstwhile CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a re-create to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the political party'southward finances, strategy, and all the coin raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the political party communications director, and it would brand concluding decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign well-nigh all other staffing, budgeting, information, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn't write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, hither was the reply.
When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate'southward team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate's command simply after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore's entrada in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, merely four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.
I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal abuse that would show that the DNC was rigging the organization to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could non observe any in party affairs or amongst the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating private deport for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I plant this agreement.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was non illegal, merely it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been off-white, 1 campaign would not take control of the party earlier the voters had decided which 1 they wanted to pb. This was non a criminal human action, merely as I saw it, it compromised the party'due south integrity.
***
I had to continue my promise to Bernie. I was in desperation as I dialed him. Keeping this hugger-mugger was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued equally a woman and as a public servant.
"Hi, senator. I've completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer," I said. "But I volition not kill the patient."
I discussed the fundraising agreement that each of the candidates had signed. Bernie was familiar with it, but he and his staff ignored it. They had their own mode of raising money through small donations. I described how Hillary's campaign had taken it some other pace.
I told Bernie I had establish Hillary's Articulation Fundraising Understanding. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this command of the political party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the acting chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.
Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or limited outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary's chances were. The polls were unanimous in her winning just what, he wanted to know, was my own cess?
I had to be frank with him. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I constitute a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere. I was concerned most the Obama coalition and about millennials.
I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to entrada with all the heart and promise he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very time to come of the state in peril. I knew he heard me. I knew he agreed with me, merely I never in my life had felt and then tiny and powerless equally I did making that call.
When I hung upwards the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, merely out of anger. We would become frontward. Nosotros had to.
Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
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