Justin Cooper (Credit: public domain)

“Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Justin Cooper, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and Clinton Foundation employee who registered the domain name of the unsecure clintonemail.com server that Hillary Clinton used while serving as Secretary of State. Cooper admits that he spoke with Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, one week prior to his deposition and let her know that the deposition had been scheduled. Cooper also said that he worked with Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, to create the private email system, but can’t recall if Clinton had any input in its creation or if he wiped the original server. The entire transcript is available here.

(…) Cooper testified that he spoke with Mills the week before giving his deposition:

Q When did you last speak with Cheryl Mills?

A Last week.

Judge Lamberth late last year criticized the DOJ, saying he was “dumbfounded” by the Inspector General report revealing that Mills had been given immunity and was allowed to accompany former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her FBI interview. The full transcript of that hearing is available here.

I did print out and read that 500-page report when I got it and I was actually dumbfounded when found out, in reading that report, that Cheryl Mills had been given immunity because … I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief, and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in — by the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case. So I did not know that until I read the IG report and learned that and that she had accompanied the Secretary to her interview.

(In an April 28, 2008 ruling relating to Mills’ conduct as a White House official in responding to concerns about lost White House email records, Judge Lamberth called Mills’ participation in the matter “loathsome.” He further stated Mills was responsible for “the most critical error made in this entire fiasco … Mills’ actions were totally inadequate to address the problem.”)

When Cooper was asked who approached him about creating the clintonemail.com account, Cooper answered: “It would have been a discussion with Huma Abedin.” Cooper also testified that Abedin was his primary contact regarding the choice of the domain name that was registered “I believe” in “January ’09.”

Cooper’s testimony is at odds with a 2016 Judicial Watch deposition of Abedin in which she testified that she became aware of the server through “reading in some news articles about a year, a year-and-a-half ago, when it was – it was being publicly discussed.”

Cooper said “I don’t recall” when asked if Clinton herself had any input in the creation of the domain name.

Cooper also testified that there were two servers: an original “Apple server” and then a Windows server, which was “the Pagliano server,” named after Clinton’s top State Department IT specialist Bryan Pagliano. Cooper said he couldn’t recall whether the Apple server was wiped once her emails were transferred over to the Pagliano server in early 2009.

When Cooper was asked to testify how many e-mails accounts he created or setup for Clinton he answered, “To the best of my recollection two or three.” Cooper also said that he and Pagliano set up email accounts for Abedin and Chelsea Clinton.

Pagliano was a Clinton State Department IT official who repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions in a 2016 Judicial Watch deposition.

(…) He identified controversial Clinton Foundation official and advisor to President Clinton Doug Band as the individual in a redacted FBI 302 report who had conversations with Cooper and Abedin about the Apple server and who thought adding Hillary Clinton to the server was a “bad idea.”
Q Let me direct your attention to the fourth paragraph about four lines up. This is a redacted version, so we don’t know who the interviewee is or some of the names. But I want to direct your attention to the line that starts off with the redaction and says, blank recall the conversation with Huma Abedin and Cooper regarding the addition of Hillary Clinton to the Apple server; do you see that?

A I do.

Q Do you know who that individual would be …

A I suspect it’s Doug Band.

Q The next line says, blank thought it was a bad idea, but the issue had been decided by that point in time; do you see that?

A Yes.

(Read more: Judicial Watch, 6/18/2019)

American Center for Law & Justice Logo (Credit: public domain)

“We have just uncovered a stunning revelation about the extent to which the Clinton State Department colluded with the Clinton Foundation. Despite what Hillary Clinton told the American people, there was no firewall.”

(…) “These documents, only now being uncovered through our FOIA request and subsequent litigation, show extensive communications exchanged between Clinton or her senior staff at State Department and Doug Band – a senior aid at the Clinton Foundation and creator of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).

In recent court filings, the State Department has revealed that more than 8,700 documents exist in Cheryl Mills’ and/or Huma Abedin’s files which contain the single search term, “Doug Band.” It is possible, and indeed likely, that each document consists of several pages placing the number closer to 18,000 pages or more.

The ACLJ has also learned through our litigation that another 22,000 documents exist in Cheryl Mills’ and Huma Abedin’s files (not including attachments) mentioning or referring to the Clinton Foundation or a related term referencing the foundation.

This information alone serves as overwhelming evidence of the corruption that occurred within the State Department during the time Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. The documents also confirm that Secretary Clinton intentionally lied to the American people and misled the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State. On several occasions, Secretary Clinton assured the Senate that she would maintain a complete separation between her two worlds – the foundation and any donors hoping to obtain favors and her operation of the State Department. In fact, she informed the Senate that as early as January 2009, steps had already been taken to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Absolutely no such steps appear to have ever been taken.

Indeed, in just the most recent 89 pages of documents produced by State which mention Doug Band, it is clear that Band served as a liaison for Clinton donors looking for favors and official acts from the Clinton-run State Department.

From requests for Secretary Clinton’s appearance at social events and fundraisers to requests for special consideration for government positions (Brock Johnson) and at least 5 ambassadorships (a diplomatic official of the highest rank), Doug Band was the guy to contact; and he had a direct line to Secretary Clinton and her senior staff. If a foundation donor needed help with a visa application in light of a prior criminal conviction or experienced complications with international travel, they contacted Doug Band and, within minutes of receiving their request, Doug Band would forward the request/favor to Huma Abedin or Cheryl Mills.

In fact, when other government employees or officials couldn’t get a hold of Secretary Clinton or her staff, they emailed Doug Band for a response.”

(…) “Brock Johnson later tipped off Cheryl Mills about a “Significant FOIA” request in 2012 that requested information about “the number of email accounts of, or associated with, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton.” The Inspector General found that the State Department then falsely stated that there were “no records responsive to your request,” when in fact numerous officials knew about Secretary Clinton’s private email address. To be clear, Johnson tipped off Cheryl Mills about the FOIA request that would have first publicly uncovered Secretary Clinton’s email scandal; instead the State Department covered it up for months longer. And Johnson obtained his job as a “favor” to the Clinton Foundation.” (Read more: American Center for Law and Justice, 5/23/2018)

Amitabh Desai (Credit: Social Miami)

“Hacked emails published by Wikileaks this week appear to show Qatar pledging to donate $1 million to Hillary Clinton’s family’s charitable foundation, despite her promise to curb new donations by foreign governments while U.S. secretary of state.

In an email from 2012, a senior official from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation informs colleagues that a planned donation by Qatar’s government to mark Bill Clinton’s birthday came up in a meeting he had with the Gulf state’s ambassador in Washington.

The ambassador said that he asked “to see WJC ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011,” Amitabh Desai, the foundation official, writes in his email, using the former U.S. president’s initials.

(…) “Hillary Clinton promised the U.S. government that while she served as secretary of state the foundation would not accept new funding from foreign governments without seeking clearance from the State Department’s ethics office.” (Read more:  Reuters, 10/14/2016)

Qatar Ambassador Mohammed Bin Abdullah Bin Mutib Al-Rumaihi (Credit: Mohamed el-Shahed / Agence France Presse / Getty Images)

“Amitabh Desai, director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, writes in an email to other foundation officials, that he met with Qatar’s ambassador to the US four days earlier, on April 12, 2012. The ambassador is Mohammed Bin Abdullah Bin Mutib Al Rumaihi, who just assumed that position several weeks earlier.” (Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 12/26/2013) (WikiLeaks, 10/13/2016)

“He summarizes that Al Rumaihi “Would like to see WJC [former President William Jefferson Clinton] ‘for five minutes’ in NYC [New York City], to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011.

Additionally, “Qatar would welcome our suggestions for investments in Haiti – particularly on education and health. They have allocated most of their $20 million but are happy to consider projects we suggest. I’m collecting input from CF (Clinton Foundation) Haiti team.

The email is sent to foundation officials Douglas Band, Justin Cooper, Bruce Lindsey, Laura Graham, and Clinton advisor John Podesta.” (WikiLeaks, 10/13/2016)

Kimberly Strassel (Credit: Wall Street Journal)

By Kimberley Strassel

(…) “The memo came near the end of a 2011 review by law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett into Clinton Foundation practices. Chelsea Clinton had grown concerned about the audacious mixing of public and private, and the review was designed to ensure that the foundation didn’t lose its charitable tax status. Mr. Band, Teneo boss and epicenter of what he calls “ Bill Clinton, Inc.,” clearly felt under assault and was eager to brag up the ways in which his business had concurrently benefited the foundation, Clinton political causes and the Clinton bank account. The memoed result is a remarkably candid look at the sleazy inner workings of the Clinton grifters-in-chief.
The cross-pollination is flagrant, and Mr. Band gives example after example of how it works. He and his partner Declan Kelly (a Hillary Clinton fundraiser whom Mrs. Clinton rewarded by making him the State Department’s special envoy to Northern Ireland) buttered up their clients with special visits to Bill’s home and tête-à-tête golf rounds with the former president. They then “cultivated” these marks ( Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, UBS) for foundation dollars, and then again for high-dollar Bill Clinton speeches and other business payouts.

Teneo’s incestuous behavior also included Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. The Band memo boasts that Mr. Kelly (while he was Mrs. Clinton’s State envoy) introduced the then-head of UBS Wealth Management, Bob McCann, to Bill Clinton at an American Ireland Fund event in 2009. “Mr. Kelly subsequently asked Mr. Mccann [sic] to support the Foundation, which he did . . . Mr. Kelly also encouraged Mr. Mccann [sic] to invite President Clinton to give several paid speeches, which he has done,” reads Mr. Band’s memo. UBS ultimately paid Bill $2 million.

American Ireland Fund meanwhile became a Teneo client, and made Mr. Kelly (of former State envoy fame) a trustee, where he “ensured that the AIF is a significant donor to the Foundation.” AIF then bestowed upon Mrs. Clinton a major award on her final trip to Northern Ireland in 2012, in an event partly sponsored by . . . Teneo.

Not that this is all one way. Mr. Band let slip just how useful all these arrangements were for Teneo, too, when he backhandedly apologized in the memo for hosting 15 client meetings in a hotel room rented by the Clinton Global Initiative.

The memo removes any doubt that the foundation is little more than an unregistered super PAC working on the Clintons’ behalf. Donors to the charity are simultaneously tapped to give Bill speech requests and other business arrangements, including the $3.5 million he was paid annually to serve as “honorary chairman” of Laureate International Universities. Mr. Band’s memo also notes his success at getting donors to “support candidates running for office that President Clinton was supporting.” (Read more: Wall Street Journal, 10/27/2016) (Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLC “Governance Review” 12/03/2011)

Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-‘Amoud (Credit: Ethiopian News)

“Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) CEO Ira Magaziner sends an email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, Clinton Foundation foreign policy director Amitabh Desai, Douglas Band (an aide to former US President Bill Clinton), and two others, regarding Saudi Arabian and Ethiopian billionaire Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-‘Amoud. Magaziner writes: “CHAI would like to request that President Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed to thank him for offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia and expressing regrets that President Clinton’s schedule does not permit him to attend the conference.”

Desai replies, “Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds crazy to do.“

Band then comments, “If he doesn’t do it CHAI will say he didn’t give the money [because] of wjc [Bill Clinton].”

Podesta writes, “I agree with Doug and this seems rather easy and harmless and not a big time sink.”(Wikileaks 10/12/16)

Thus it can be seen Sheikh Mohammed is giving some money to the foundation, though the amount is unknown. Also, the exchange shows Podesta, who has no position in the foundation, helping make foundation decisions.

(Credit: Patrick McMullan/The Associated Press)

“A 2011 confidential memo written by a longtime Bill Clinton aide during Hillary Clinton’s State Department tenure describes the overlap between the former president’s business ventures and fundraising for the family’s charities. The former aide also described free travel and vacations arranged for the Clintons by corporations, reinforcing ethics concerns about the Democratic presidential nominee.

The 13-page memo, by Doug Band, was included in hacked emails from the private account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta that were released by WikiLeaks. Band, describing the former president’s management of “Bill Clinton Inc.,” laid out the “unorthodox nature” of how he and other aides navigated between Bill Clinton’s dual interests in seeking out speaking and consulting ventures around the world while he raised funds for the Clinton Foundation.

In the November 2011 memo, Band described “more than $50 million in for-profit activity we have personally helped to secure for President Clinton to date.”

(…) Band wrote the memo to lawyers hired by the Clinton Foundation to audit the organization’s structure and operations. It did not specifically cite ethics concerns, and in a new statement, Thursday Band told The Associated Press that his firm, Teneo, “never received any financial benefit or benefit of any kind” for its work for the Clinton Foundation. Band did not elaborate on what gifts Bill Clinton obtained from his speech and consulting clients.

Hillary Clinton met with or spoke to representatives of at least 15 companies and organizations that paid her husband for speaking engagements during her tenure as secretary of state, according to a review of her planning schedules from the State Department.

(…) Band’s memo described how he and Justin Cooper, another long-time Bill Clinton aide, helped the former president and his family obtain gifts of “personal travel, hospitality, vacation” and air travel arrangements. Financial records Hillary Clinton filed between 2009 and 2013 listed speeches and limited business income that Bill Clinton earned during her government service but did not list any travel, vacation or other gifts that Band cited in his memo.

(…) Under federal disclosure rules overseen by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, federal officials and office seekers are not required to list gifts provided to a spouse if the gifts are “independent of their relationship to you.”

(…) Richard Painter, the top ethics official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said he was concerned with Bill Clinton’s use of aides who dealt with his private business clients as well as Clinton Foundation donors. In cases Band outlined in the memo, Clinton’s speech clients ended up as donors to his family’s charity.

“The two should not be conflated because the Clinton Foundation cannot be used for the personal enrichment of anybody including the former president,” Painter said.

Critics have raised concerns about the multiple roles of Clinton aides.

Hillary Clinton’s top aides at the State Department – among them her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and long-time aide Huma Abedin – at times held multiple roles, according to congressional investigators and the State Department. Abedin worked for the foundation, Teneo and Hillary Clinton after stepping down from her full-time job at the State Department. Mills received permission in early 2009 to work as a “special government employee” for the State Department while she also held a position with the Clinton Foundation. Tech specialist Bryan Pagliano performed private tasks overseeing Hillary Clinton’s private computer server at the same time he worked for the State Department. (Read more: Washington Times, 10/28/2016)  (Memo PDF)   (Memo Archived Copy)

(Dept of State/FOIA release, 9/03/2019)

Gilbert Chagoury, Chairman of The Chagoury Group (left), Bill Clinton (center) and Ronald Chagoury, Chief Executive Officer (right) attend the Eko Atlantic City Dedication Ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria on February 21st, 2012. (Credit: public domain)

“This week we released 296 pages of State Department records containing 44 email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department. This brings the known total to 171 of new Clinton emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

The new documents reveal that in April 2009 controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band pushed for a job for an associate. In the email, Band tells Hillary Clinton’s former aides at the State Department, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, that it is “important to take care of [Redacted]. Band is reassured by Abedin that, “Personnel has been sending him options.” Band was co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative.

Included is a 2009 email in which Band directs Abedin and Mills to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon.  Band notes that Chagoury is “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us,” and insists that Abedin call Amb. Jeffrey Feltman to connect him to Chagoury.

Chagoury, a foreign national, is a close friend of former President Bill Clinton and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation.  He has appeared near the top of the Foundation’s donor list as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. He also pledged $1 billion to the ClintonGlobal Initiative. According to a 2010 investigation by PBS Frontline, Chagoury was convicted in 2000 in Switzerland for laundering money from Nigeria, but agreed to a plea deal and repaid $66 million to the Nigerian government.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 8/12/2016)

The April 22, 2009 email from Doug Band to Huma Abedin and her response. (Credit: public domain)

“Despite denials that the State Department and the Clinton Foundation had any significant ties to each other while Hillary Clinton served as the nation’s chief diplomat, a new batch of emails sheds new light on the seemingly close relationship between the two entities.

The latest email release, obtained by the group Judicial Watch from a State Department Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, included several exchanges between a top foundation worker and State officials working under Clinton.

In one back-and-forth from April 2009, Doug Band, who worked for the Clinton Foundation (including its Clinton Global Initiative) as well as serving as a personal aide to Bill Clinton, appeared to push then-State Department aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mill for “a favor” on behalf of a foundation associate.

Band said in his email that it was “important to take care of [redacted],” and Abedin responded “We have all had him on our radar” and that “Personnel has been sending him options.”

Band, in another email to Abedin and Mills in April of that year, asked for the State Department’s “substance person” in Lebanon to contact Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire philanthropist who was one of the Clinton Foundation’s top donors.

“As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in lebanon,” Band wrote. He added it was “Very imp.”

Abedin responded that the “substance person” was “jeff feltman” — a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. “I’m sure he knows him,” she said. “I’ll [sic] talk to jeff.”

Band insisted to Abedin: “Better if you call” Chagoury and “now preferable.”

“This is very important,” he wrote. “He’s awake I’m sure.”

(Read more: (CBS News, 8/10/2016)    (US Department of State, 6/30/2016)

Douglas Band (Credit: McMullan /Cosipa News)

(…)”As the foundation grew, so did the outside business ventures pursued by Mr. Clinton and several of his aides.

None have drawn more scrutiny in Clinton circles than Teneo, a firm co-founded in 2009 by Mr. Band, described by some as a kind of surrogate son to Mr. Clinton. Aspiring to merge corporate consulting, public relations and merchant banking in a single business, Mr. Band poached executives from Wall Street, recruited other Clinton aides to join as employees or advisers and set up shop in a Midtown office formerly belonging to one of the country’s top hedge funds.

By 2011, the firm had added a third partner, Declan Kelly, a former State Department envoy for Mrs. Clinton. And Mr. Clinton had signed up as a paid adviser to the firm.

Teneo worked on retainer, charging monthly fees as high as $250,000, according to current and former clients. The firm recruited clients who were also Clinton Foundation donors, while Mr. Band and Mr. Kelly encouraged others to become new foundation donors. Its marketing materials highlighted Mr. Band’s relationship with Mr. Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, where Mr. Band sat on the board of directors through 2011 and remains an adviser. Some Clinton aides and foundation employees began to wonder where the foundation ended and Teneo began.

Those worries intensified after the collapse of MF Global, the international brokerage firm led by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey, in the fall of 2011. The firm had been among Teneo’s earliest clients, and its collapse over bad European investments — while paying $125,000 a month for the firm’s public relations and financial advice — drew Teneo and the Clintons unwanted publicity.

Mr. Clinton ended his advisory role with Teneo in March 2012, after an article appeared in The New York Post suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was angry over the MF Global controversy. A spokesman for Mr. Clinton denied the report. But in a statement released afterward, Mr. Clinton announced that he would no longer be paid by Teneo.

(…) Mr. Band left his paid position with the foundation in late 2010, but has remained involved with C.G.I., as have a number of Teneo clients, like Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical and UBS Americas. Standard Chartered, a British financial services company that paid a $340 million fine to New York regulators last year to settle charges that it had laundered money from Iran, is a Teneo client and a sponsor of the 2012 global initiative.” (Read more: New York Times, 8/13/2013)