As Bill Clinton’s presidency ended, he was popular yet tainted by scandal, struggling to find his footing after eight years in the White House.
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Aides also got the GSA to pay for computer technology that was used in part by the foundation, the news outlet reported.
Bill Clinton used taxpayer money to pay the partial salaries of 10 of his aides, including one who helped set up Hillary Clinton’s infamous private email server, according to a Politico investigation into thousands of pages of documents.
Cooper drew government payments from 2011 through 2013. But the appearance of a multi-millionaire taking advantage of a government program originally created to prevent pennilessness will only further the perception of the Clintons as avaricious insiders. According to an anonymously sourced April report in a Washington Times column, the Clintons also paid legal fees for Cooper during the FBI investigation that brought in people in the Clinton orbit.
It includes longtime Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper, who despite not having a security clearance, any apparent training in cyber-security or a job at the State Department, in early 2009 helped set up the private email account that Hillary Clinton would use to send and receive classified information as Secretary of State. The emails showed that Clinton’s staff kept in close contact with foundation donors and received requests for favors ranging from a sports executive hoping to score a visa for a British soccer player with a criminal history to rock singer Bono’s desire to live stream from a space station at a U2 concert.
Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in 2014. All of the money requested by Clinton was within his rights, it appears, as a former president.
“The work of the foundation is as important to him as anything he’s ever done in a lifetime of public service”, said Matt McKenna, who worked as Clinton’s spokesman until a year ago. “We are unaware of any legal prohibition that would preclude these activities”, said the aide.
Politico added scrutiny of GSA records and Clinton Foundation tax returns found that at least 13 of the 22 staffers paid by the GSA to work in Bill Clinton’s office also worked at the Clinton Foundation.
The New York Times calls for the Clinton family to do more to distance themselves from the Clinton Foundation, calling it an “ethical imperative” as she continues to run for president.
But even as the Clintons got rich and grew their foundation into a $2 billion organization credited with major victories in the fights against childhood obesity and AIDS – while paying six figure salaries to top aides – Bill Clinton continued drawing more cash from the Former President’s Act than any other ex-president, according to a POLITICO analysis.
We knew the Clinton Foundation relied on a variety of deep-pocketed donors, but did we realize that many of those donors included us?
On a number of occasions, the G.S.A. pushed back on certain purchases, Politico reports, specifically furniture and I.T. equipment, in order to verify that the items were to be used by Bill’s personal office and not by his foundation.
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Donald Trump agrees with the “liberal” New York Times when it comes to the paper’s criticism of the Clinton Foundation, with the Republican’s campaign sending a press release with a link to an editorial titled, “Cutting Ties to the Clinton Foundation”.
