Newly leaked emails show consternation among those closest to Hillary Clinton about how Bill Clinton’s business dealings might damage his reputation and potentially affect her presidential hopes.
The emails, posted Monday by the WikiLeaks organization, also give insight into tension and turmoil within the Clinton Foundation while Clinton was serving as secretary of state. The chief operating officer of the family charity was reported to be threatening to commit suicide over the stress.
Wikileaks began releasing on Friday what it says are years of messages from the accounts of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta. Podesta has acknowledged his emails were hacked, but warned the messages may have been altered or edited to do political damage to Clinton.
It wasn’t immediately clear who hacked Podesta’s emails, though U.S. intelligence officials last week blamed the Russian government for a series of breaches and leaks intended to influence the presidential election.
The emails that circulated among Podesta, Chelsea Clinton and former close Bill Clinton aide Doug Band detail internal tensions that simmered inside the Clinton Foundation and appear to have played a role in Band’s departure from the family charity.
Internal concerns among Clinton family intimates about Band and the private corporate advisory firm he co-founded, Teneo Holdings, have been previously detailed in several media accounts. But the new emails provide raw glimpses of an apparent power struggle between the Clintons’ daughter and Band, who worked closely for Bill Clinton for more than a decade after the end of the Clinton administration.
In an email exchange from December 2011, Chelsea Clinton tells Podesta and others—including Clintonadviser and current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe—that she’s increasingly concerned about Teneo.
The email includes a forwarded news article that alleges that former President Bill Clinton had collected $50,000 a month through Teneo from MF Global, the commodities brokerage formerly run by former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, while MF Global was preparing to file for bankruptcy.
Chelsea Clinton tells Podesta and others that two people separately came up to her at a London event for the Clinton Foundation to raise concerns that someone representing Teneo clients had been calling members of the British Parliament “on behalf of President Clinton” without her father’s knowledge. Chelsea Clinton said the calls had people in London “making comparisons” between the “profit motivations” of the former president and former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“Which would horrify my father,” Chelsea Clinton wrote.
Band wrote in an email that Chelsea Clinton seemed more concerned about critical news coverage about MF Global, a derivatives broker, and Band’s advisory firm, Teneo, than published reports about Bill Clinton’sinfidelity.
