Morning Ed: Crime {2016.11.02.W}

DavidTC in reply to trizzlor says:

Because Band himself says that he was giving away free passes (which are worth $20k) to CGI gatherings to clients of Teneo (his lobbying firm) where he would then court those clients into for-profit business.

Erm, do we have any evidence that he *acquired* those passes for free? Because that seems rather important when trying to decide if this was inappropriate.

Firms lobbying people by *purchasing* tickets to events and then *giving* people those tickets is perfectly normal. If that’s what he did, if he paid $20k so *someone else* could attend, it’s fine. It’s no different than buying season tickets to a basketball team and letting people use them.

If he has some sort of position inside the CGI that allows him to just *give out* tickets, OTOH, that is inexcusable. If he had been granted that power, it would have been so he could ‘bribe’ people with tickets to get them to donate to the CGI, not so he could bribe them into hiring Bill.

I am involved with marketing at a local community theatre, and I can give comp tickets to anyone who seems like they might be a donor, or who might be a ‘influencer’ in the community, or, hell, someone who sounds like they might be a future patron. Basically, I can give them out at my own discretion. But it would be completely inappropriate for me to give them to people to try to get them to consider doing business with my company, or as rewards for doing business with me.

And there’s a sorta middle ground, where perhaps Band, or Bill Clinton, were given those tickets for free due to doing work *for* the CGI, but it was sorta assumed they’d be giving them to friends and family, not bribing people with them. (As someone on the board of directors, Bill Clinton is not supposed to be compensated.) I am not *sure* that’s illegal, but it’s pretty skeevy, it’s sorta like actors selling their comp tickets.Report

DavidTC in reply to trizzlor says:

Now, if we squint really hard we can read Band’s first footnote as saying that he comps potential donors that *incidentally* happen to be target Teneo clients.

Erm, to have to squint really hard, you *first* have to read the ‘target’ in to mean ‘targetted to be Teneo clients’ as opposed to ‘[already existing] Teneo clients that we have targetted [to be donors]’.

In fact I had to read it a few times to even figure out that you were reading it some other way, because it seems really clear to me.

As I said, it would completely inapproriate for Band to give cmop tickets out to people *because* those people are clients of his. Where as it’s perfectly fine for him to give them to people who show an interest in donations *even if* they are his clients.

And *that is why he put in that footnote*, because he’s worried that, without a formal comp policy, the IRS might think that’s what he’s doing, so he wants to make sure the formal policy has some actual rules about that, because the current comp policy is very vague.

And we can similarly read the second footnote as saying that Teneo takes advantage of this happy accident to host meetings with clients at CGI conferences but only to develop their relationship to the Foundation (oh and whoops we charged CGI for the hotel space but I’ll clear that right up).

Erm, no, it was ‘whoops, the CGI didn’t charge *them* for the hotel space’, not that they charged the CGI.

And before you start trying to make anything about this, this was not ‘Oh, he gets caught, and has to explain himself’…it’s just, ‘Heads up, you guys didn’t bill us for that meeting room like you should have.’. The sort of business crap that gets overlooked all the time, and in fact wouldn’t be a big deal *even if* Band didn’t catch it…but, hell, he *did* catch it, so I have no idea why that’s important at all.

ut this is an especially tortured interpretation given the context of these footnotes, which is all of the for-profit money Band has brought in for Clinton and family while *while not being “separately compensated” for this work*.

And I think you’re misreading this also.

It says, very specifically, that ‘neither Justin nor I are separately compensated for this work’.

Note by that he means they don’t get a *cut* of that, not that they aren’t paid at all for it…and notice the word *separately*.

And note that Justin Cooper, as far as I can tell, has *never* worked for Teneo. So who is he getting compensated from?

What is actually going on is that Justin Cooper and Douglas Band are *paid staff* of the Clintons. When they wander around shilling Clinton’s speechs, *that* is who they are working for.

And Douglas Band *additionally* operates a consulting firm/financial management firm named Teneo that has been hired to, basically, operate the CF.

It is also worth pointing out that, at the time of this letter, that setup has existed *five months*, so everyone is still trying to figure everything out. Hence Band’s worries about ‘Wait, if I give comp tickets to my own clients to try to get them involved with the CF, do I look like I’m doing something wrong?’

Or, in other words, this letter doesn’t prove wrongdoing…this letter actually proves that people at the CF are *worried* about making sure that every t is crossed and i is dotted when they have these possible conflicts of interest, so said to Band ‘Hey, explain everything that’s going on so we fully understand all this.’ And Band explained it, including areas he was concerned about.

And also note that we have no idea if the CF was *happy* after they got this. It’s entirely possible they said ‘Nope, that doesn’t look very good, we’re going to make some changes. First, the formal comp policy says no giving out comps to Teneo clients at all…’Report