Hillary Clinton's Fully 'Vetted' for A General Election Against McCain? Far From It

April 30, 2008

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USpoliticstoday.com

Hillary Clinton says that over the years, through many scandals, she's been fully "vetted." If she's the Democratic nominee, she argues, there will be no surprises, no new fodder for the Republican attack mavens to morph into vote-killing TV spots.

That argument must be getting big belly laughs in GOP political war rooms.

To a Republican strategist, the Clintons' post-White House finances represent a red meat feast, brimming over with tantalizing goodies.

Start with the $165 million Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Clintons refuse to disclose where any of that $165 million came from. But some dogged journalism efforts have given us these insights:

---The New York Times put together a list of 97 people who gave some $69 million toward the library before Bill Clinton left office. Some were longtime Clinton friends. But others were donors who had lobbied the Clinton administration for policy changes. Still others were under investigation by the Clinton Justice Department.

--- Chicago bankruptcy lawyer William Brandt Jr. pledged $1 million for the Clinton library in May 1999, at the same time the Justice Department was investigating whether he'd lied about a Clinton fundraising event. The Clinton DOJ cleared him a few months later.

--- The former wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich reportedly donated $450,000 before he granted Rich a pardon for tax evasion in 2001. Neither Clinton nor the Rich family have confirmed the donation.

--- The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton Library about $10 million. In an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal, former FBI director Louis J. Freeh said Clinton "hit up [Saudi Arabia's head of state] Prince Abdullah for a contribution to his library" during a meeting in which Freeh wanted Clinton to ask about the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. Clinton has publicly disputed Freeh's account.

---Loral Space and Communications then-CEO, Bernard Schwartz, committed to $1 million in 2000, at the same time the firm was being investigated for improperly sending technology to China. Loral agreed to a $14 million fine during the Bush Administration.

The Clinton Library is overseen and funded by the Clinton Foundation, which reportedly has raised more than $500 million and, like the Library, keeps its donor list secret.

But it's hard to keep a secret like the one involving the relationship between Bill Clinton and Canadian financier Frank Giustra. In 2005, Clinton accompanied Giustra to Kazakhstan. Shortly thereafter, Giustra won a valuable Kazakh mining concession. And shortly after that, Giustra donated pledged a $130 million donation to the Clinton Foundation.

Follow the bouncing ball here. The Clintons have a $500 million foundation, and won't disclose its donors. They have a $165 million library and won't disclose the library's donors. Terry McAuliffe, who headed the foundation's fundraising efforts, now chairs Hillary Clinton's campaign. Cheryl Mills, who sits on the foundation's board, is the campaign's general counsel. Jay Carson, the foundation's former communications director, serves as the campaign's press secretary.

The New York Times reported last year that the foundation's donations were up 70 percent since Hillary Clinton's campaign got under way---with two-thirds of the money coming from just 11 donors.

Add one more spicy item to this story. The Clintons have reported $109 million in income since Bill Clinton left the White House. Much of that income came from Bill's speeches, for which he was paid up to $250,000 a pop. Who pays $250,000 just for a speech?

Now think of what the McCain campaign can do with all of this. McCain. The senior author of the McCain-Feingold law that limits campaign contributions and forces disclosure. Straight arrow McCain. Can you hear him now asking very pointed questions about the links between all of the unreported money flowing into the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Library (and those $250,000 speeches), and what influence is being bought for a prospective new Clinton White House?

And can you imagine the TV spots: the McAuliffe link; the Marc Rich pardon; the Loral secrets slipped to China? The Clintons stonewalling? And all the ugly "Slick Willy," talk of the 1990s back for a rerun in 2008?

I've collected material for this column doing less than an hour's search on the Internet. What else is out there in the hands of Republican opposition researchers that may have come from sources a layer or more deeper?

Hillary Clinton's Democratic opponents have barely touched all of this. To do so would be an act of party destruction that would compromise Democratic party prospects in November. But to Republican strategists, this is prime swift boat material. The scripts no doubt already have been written.

Hillary Clinton vetted and bulletproof against McCain's worst attacks in October? I don't think so.

Joe Rothstein is a veteran national political strategist and media producer and editor of USPoliticstoday.com. He can be contacted at joe@ipdgroup.com.