Subject: Eric Braverman Tried to Change the Clinton Foundation. Then He Quit. - Kenneth P. Vogel - POLITICO Magazine
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 20:38:54 -0500

Eric Braverman Tried to Change the Clinton Foundation. Then He Quit. -
Kenneth P. Vogel - POLITICO Magazine

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/clinton-foundation-eric-braverman-115598_Page3.html#.VPO--4Y8KnN

Eric Braverman Tried to Change the Clinton Foundation. Then He Quit.

Complicating matters was Lindsey, who remained involved as board chairman.
While Lindsey, now 66, had been limited for a time by the effects of a
stroke, he still had a key currency: a deep relationship with Bill Clinton.
The two young Arkansans first met in the late 1960s working in Washington
for Sen. J. William Fulbright. Later, Lindsey worked on Clinton’s
gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, before following the newly
elected president back to Washington in 1993 as a top administration
adviser. From a coveted West Wing office, Lindsey served as “captain” of
his old friend’s defense against impeachment proceedings.

At the foundation, sources say, Lindsey and other longtime Bill Clinton
confidants hampered Braverman’s reform efforts by warning the former
president not to allow too many changes that could be interpreted as a
course correction. The result was that Braverman would develop consensus
around reforms, but, when he tried to implement them, the old guard would
try to undercut him, say people familiar with his tenure. They say he
lacked the political background or allies to navigate between the Clintons
and their sometimes divergent power bases.

One foundation donor and longtime Clinton supporter who is personally fond
of Braverman recalled exchanging pleasantries with him at a recent
foundation event, but wondering about his role at the foundation. “I had no
idea he was running the place,” said the donor.

Some bristled when Braverman hired a foundation media relations director.
Critics complained
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/magazine/hillary-clinton.html?_r=0> to
the *New York Times *that it was an effort to boost Braverman’s own
profile, and grumbled that his new hire—Brian Cookstra—had been a lead
spokesman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services during
its clumsy Obamacare rollout.

Braverman’s defenders contend that it had nothing to do with boosting his
profile, noting he seldom even talked with the media. They considered it a
low blow that highlighted the institutional resistance to expanding the
foundation beyond Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s fiefdoms.

Another flashpoint came in 2013, when the foundation was renamed the Bill,
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, an elevation of the Clintons’
daughter that struck some of the old guard as presumptuous and troubling.
It was one thing, they grumbled, to add the name of a former first lady who
had also been elected a United States senator and was coming off an
acclaimed stint as secretary of state—but their kid?

They worried that the family was letting her use the foundation to
establish herself as a serious player in her own right. She expanded the
foundation mission into new causes—including curbing elephant poaching and
ivory harvesting—that seemed peripheral to its core missions of fighting
AIDS, climate change and childhood obesity, or Hillary Clinton’s efforts to
increase opportunity for women and girls.

And somerolled their eyes when the foundation’s $250 million was invested
with a firm called Summit Rock Advisers where Chelsea Clinton’s best friend
Nicole Davison Fox is managing director. The two were classmates at Sidwell
Friends School and Davison Fox interned in the Clinton White House. She
later served as matron of honor in Clinton’s wedding, and her husband was a
founding employee of the hedge fund started by Clinton’s husband, Marc
Mezvinsky.

Davison Fox did not respond to requests for comment, but foundation
officials pointed out that her firm was selected through a competitive
bidding process in which 15 firms were invited to participate. And while
Davison Fox played a role pitching her firm, officials said Chelsea Clinton
did not participate in the final selection of Summit Rock once her friend’s
firm became a finalist.

Most major donors came to foundation through their relationships with Bill
and Hillary Clinton, and many still seem to think of it as the former
president’s foundation.

Andrew Tobias, a longtime Democratic donor and Clinton loyalist, praised
Bill Clinton's ability to bring together affluent people from across the
political spectrum to support good causes. The treasurer of the Democratic
National Committee, Tobias has personally donated more than $250,000 to the
foundation's efforts, and described himself as "really proud to have been a
very small part of this. It's amazing how many millions of lives here and
around the world President Clinton has touched and improved—even
saved—since leaving office, and how many business leaders affiliated with
both partied he'd helped to energize in constructive, creative pursuits and
partnerships."

Foundation fundraising has posed complications for groups trying to raise
money for Hillary Clinton’s nascent campaign, as Politico has reported
<http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/hillary-clinton-priorities-usa-action-115084.html>.
Some top-dollar donors who had recently given to the foundation’s endowment
drive have resisted solicitations to pledge seven-figure sums to a key
super PAC seeking to support the expected Clinton campaign. And some allies
working to pave the way for the campaign worry that the longer Hillary
Clinton continues high-dollar fundraising for the foundation, the more
difficult it will be for the super PACs to collect their own big checks.

A foundation official said “the Clintons will continue to fundraise for the
Clinton Foundation as appropriate.” And sources say the foundation will be
the beneficiary of two upcoming fundraisers around the time of its planned
annual gala on March 4 in New York, which will feature a performance by
Carole King, and is expected to be one of the Clintons’ final major events
before the campaign. The foundation is also planning a fundraiser hosted by
Tony James, billionaire president of the private equity firm Blackstone,
and a March 9 fundraiser hosted by venture capitalist Deven Parekh that’s
being billed as a final chance to hang out with Clinton before she kicks
off her campaign.

Braverman’s defenders say that growing the endowment, which was in the $20
million range when he arrived, was among his major goals. They say he
always intended to stabilize the foundation and then move on. In fact, he
kept his townhouse in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, while
accepting a housing allowance for temporary digs in New York.

He did not want to preside over the foundation during a presidential
campaign when it would become harder to continue making changes, say
sources familiar with his thinking, who suggested that Braverman decided it
was best to leave early this year, before the presidential campaign lurched
into high gear.

“You come in, you fix shit and then you leave,” said one person familiar
with the situation. “In some ways, that is the apex of management
consulting.”

*Kenneth P. Vogel is chief investigative reporter at *Politico *and author
of *Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp—on
the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics
<http://www.amazon.com/Big-Money-Suspicious-Ultra-Rich-Hijacking/dp/1610393384>
*(PublicAffairs).*

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

Sent from my iPhon