Chelsea’s Invisible Hand
Another way for rich to curry favor w/ Clintons: Invest in son-in-law’s hedge fund? Mickey Kaus
An inside report on the shadowy role of Hillary’s most important adviser.
By KENNETH P. VOGEL
April 12, 2015
Rafanelli Events Management, Inc. also planned fundraising galas for the Clinton Foundation, and, according to Federal Election Commission filings, was paying $1,200 a month in rent to Hillary Clinton’s still idling presidential campaign committee, which had relocated from its Northern Virginia headquarters to an office in downtown Washington.
At the time, a spokeswoman for Rafanelli Events told Politico that the company “worked on several events with Hillary and actually we’re working with her down in D.C. right now on some events for her with the State Department. We got the connection to the State Department through her.”
Less than eight months after the wedding, Mark Walsh, Rafanelli’s personal and business partner, became deputy chief of protocol at Clinton’s State Department—a $179,700-a-year post. While that office oversees payments for state dinners like those that Rafanelli Events produces for the Obama White House, Walsh maintained a stake in Rafanelli Events worth as much as $1 million, according to a disclosure he filed in late 2012. Walsh, who directed LGBT outreach for Clinton’s campaign, promised the State Department he would recuse himself from decisions relating to the company.
Rafanelli, who had bundled more than $100,000 in contributions for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, declined to comment for this story. But he told a Boston magazine in 2010 that “when Hillary went to the State Department, D.C. became a good secondary market.”
Meanwhile, all of the wedding attention raised security concerns for Chelsea, who was no longer eligible for Secret Service protection. An incident around the time of her wedding, when Chelsea was swarmed by a crowd, heightened concerns, according to sources familiar with the situation. At her own expense, Chelsea Clinton hired a security firm to occasionally provide personal protection, and for some events, arrives with a driver and escort from T & M Protective Resources, a firm that also provides security around the Clinton Foundation’s events, according to people familiar with the arrangement. They say the firm’s services can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. It’s run partly by the former Secret Service agent who was in charge of her parents’ protective detail when her father was president and then when her mother was in the Senate.
While Chelsea still takes New York City’s subway from time to time, the surge in interest in her around the wedding made her realize that she had a celebrity’s platform and caused her to re-evaluate her life. She committed to using her platform to advocate for her causes, such as advancing women and girls, and boosting public health, her focus for a master’s degree from Columbia University (where she continues to teach the subject).
As her chief of staff Bari Lurie told Fast Company, “She quickly realized, ‘There is nothing I’m doing now that’s satiating this interest. This doing-nothing thing: I’ve tried it, and it didn’t work.’”
***
Even as Chelsea Clinton increasingly devoted herself to public service, she and her husband Marc prominently rubbed shoulders with New York’s rich and famous. They became fixtures on the society scene, where they impressed the city’s elite.
“I saw a lot of Hillary in her and a lot of Bill in him,” recalled one dinner partner of a night out with the high-voltage young couple.
Mezvinsky clearly bonded with his father-in-law, and he sometimes shows up with Bill Clinton at sporting events or Clinton Foundation poker tournaments. At the same time, he’s been building up a hedge fund with wealthy investors, including some of the deep-pocketed funders of the Clinton donor network.
Indeed, when Mezvinsky and his partners co-founded the hedge fund Eaglevale Partners in 2012, word spread quickly among Clinton backers on Wall Street that the family would look favorably on investments in it, according to one major New York Democratic donor, who works in the finance sector.
For example, billionaire media mogul Haim Saban, who has donated as much as $25 million to the Clinton Foundation and whose wife sits on its board, has told people that he invested Eaglevale, sources tell Politico. A spokesman for Saban Capital Group said via email “our company policy does not allow me to confirm and/or comment on any of Mr. Saban’s personal investments.” Saban, who has pledged his “full might” to electing Hillary Clinton and is planning a fundraiser for her next month in Los Angeles, tried to pay Bill Clinton as a consultant, but his wife’s State Department vetoed the arrangement because of Saban’s involvement in foreign policy advocacy.
Among the other rich donors to the Clintons’ foundation or their campaigns who also are Eaglevale investors are Lasry and his brother-in-law, Craig Effron, as well as the British investment banker Jacob Rothschild, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The overlap between Eaglevale investors and Clinton donors “shows the fine line the Clinton family must navigate as their charitable and business endeavors come under scrutiny in an election cycle,” wrote the Times.
Patricof, who said he discussed the fund with Mezvinsky but did not invest in it, suggested the son-in-law did not need the Clinton name to succeed in finance. “Marc is a very smart young man. I’m sure he’ll do very well in his field, also. They’re a good team,” said Patricof, who has donated as much as $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and $32,000 to the various Clinton campaigns.
Lasry called Mezvinsky “an exceptionally smart guy.” Though Eaglevale has struggled to return significant profits, losing big on an investment in Greek bonds, Lasry said he still has confidence in Mezvinsky. “I liked what he was doing with Greece. There was risk involved, but if Greece was staying in the Eurozone, and wasn’t having these issues, we all would be making a fortune,” Lasry said. “It’s turned out to be the reverse, but that’s life.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/hillary-clinton-2016-chelsea-116910_Page3.html#ixzz3XDCLonBI |
