BILL’S BILLIONS
New York Times sources say that if Sen. Hillary
Clinton loses the Democratic nomination or a general
election for President, it will largely be due to the efforts of
their investigative and political reporter Jo
Becker, who yesterday reported on the ties between former President
Bill Clinton and Canadian mining magnate
Frank Giustra, who has committed almost a quarter
billion dollars to Clinton’s foundation, largely after Clinton
appeared to pave the way for Giustra’s company to get a sweet
uranium mining deal in Kazakhstan.
Becker, who formerly worked for the Washington Post,
has been put on the Bill Clinton beat for the foreseeable future,
and has been digging around the Clinton Foundation for months,
according to Clinton campaign sources, one of whom has been
assigned to track Becker’s activities. “She’s like a woman
scorned,” says the campaign source. “The foundation and the former
President weren’t honest with her early in her reporting, and now
she’s going to burn the house down if she gets her way. The size of
the headache she is causing inside the campaign cannot be
quantified.”
The campaign has been trying to keep tabs on sources Becker has
been talking to for several months now, attempting to figure out
which lines of inquiry she is undertaking. As reported several
months ago, the Clinton campaign attempted some time ago to “oppo”
the former President’s post-White House time, trying to anticipate
potential thorny issues that might arise for Senator Clinton. “We
don’t know everything, because the Clinton Foundation is something
we haven’t been able to fully breach,” says another campaign
source. “We’re just getting access to some of Senator Clinton’s
papers from her time in the White House, and we’re her fricking
campaign. It’s unbelievable.”
Becker’s work has focused almost exclusively on the Clinton
Foundation, and the ways in which Clinton has used the entity to
further his own personal wealth, as well as those who support him
and his philanthropic activities.
Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton
was negotiating terms to exit a partnerships and consulting deal
with longtime supporter Ron Burkle. Clinton was
able to attract large sums of investment money to Burkle’s
operation from several sources, the biggest being the royal family
of Dubai. “Everyone assumes that if he separates from Burkle that
the relationship with Dubai is severed, too,” says a source with
ties to the Clinton Foundation. “But the Dubai ties aren’t the
result of Burkle. That’s a personal relationship with ties to the
foundation, and those aren’t going to end.”
McCAIN, CPAC, AND FRED
Advisers to Sen. John McCain are encouraging the
would-be Presidential frontrunner to arrange a private meeting with
his longtime friend, former Sen. Fred Thompson in
an attempt to gain greater credibility with the conservative base
in the Republican Party. “They can do the meeting when he’s in town
for the CPAC meeting,” says a McCain adviser, speaking of
McCain.
McCain’s campaign purchased a booth at CPAC and announced on
Wednesday that McCain himself would attend the event. McCain’s
advisers see the event as a win-win for their candidate. “If he’s
applauded, then we can spin it that he’s being welcomed by the base
that is important to win in the fall. If they boo him, then these
are still the morons who haven’t liked him for a decade, so no big
surprise, and John looks like the bigger man for showing up and
taking the abuse. But I don’t think the latter will happen.
Everyone understands the political stakes. John McCain is going to
be the nominee, and conservatives don’t want Hillary or Obama in
the White House. They will support John McCain.”
Some advisers, though, think a Thompson meeting would be even
better for McCain. According to McCain sources, the two men spoke
briefly last week several days after Thompson exited the
presidential primary field. With no conservative left in the race,
McCain is looking for ways to build support among the conservative
base he knows he will have to tap into if he is to win in the
general election. The thinking among some McCain strategists is to
have McCain look at Thompson’s tax reform and judiciary policies
and endorse one or both of them. That seems doubtful, given that
McCain has not been supportive of broad tax cuts in the past, nor
is he sympathetic to conservative judicial nominations.
McCain does not expect an endorsement from Thompson, nor has he
sought it, according to McCain insiders, but a mutual
understanding, with Thompson’s ability to speak to conservatives
and say that McCain intends to adopt more conservative policy
positions when elected might go a ways to allaying conservative
fears.
