The International Herald Tribune might be trying a bit too hard in the old watchdog department today as they “uncover” a connection between Hillary Clinton and one of the donors to Bill Clinton’s foundation. This one takes place nearly in my back yard, so I’ve gotten to watch some of the history here.
A developer in New York state donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project.
Hillary Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.
She also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.
Our friend Ed Morrissey immediately jumps all over this one as a sign of scandal plaguing the Obama administration, describing it as “Hillary Clinton helped put millions of dollars into the pockets of contributors to her husband’s foundation.”
Congel says that there is no connection between his $50,000 contribution and the legislation. Unless someone can produce wiretaps or written instructions, it would be impossible to prove him wrong, at least in the legal sense. The Clintons are a lot smarter than Rod Blagojevich, in that sense. However, the timing looks highly suspicious.
It’s not as if I wouldn’t take some evil pleasure at the prospect of Hillary getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar, but I think her Republican detractors may be a tad bit premature with the end zone celebrations on this one. First of all, as Ed has already noted, unless somebody comes up with a tape of Hillary saying, “You’d better donate to my husband’s library or I’m not going to do this” then all we really have is yet another person making contributions to politicians who act in ways beneficial to them. There’s an earth-shattering story for you, eh? The expansions to the Carousel Mall were wildly popular upstate, as they injected a lot of cash and quite a few jobs into a floundering local economy. Congel was hardly the only one to benefit.
While I wouldn’t have thought the day might come when I would be defending Hillary Clinton, I would also take issue with Ed’s characterization of Hillary putting millions into the pockets of “contributors” (plural) given this other snippet from the article.
His contribution is the only known situation so far in which an American donor gave a large sum to Bill Clinton’s foundation while benefiting from his wife’s official actions. Reines said that Hillary Clinton did not solicit the donation from Congel or discuss it with him or anyone on his behalf, and that she was unaware of its timing and size until last month.
There’s also a question of Congel’s donating history. The story would seem to draw a picture of a distressed businessman finding himself in need of help with his project and deciding to make a donation to the Clinton Library as a straight-forward business transaction. Or, if he does it more often, perhaps he’s just some sort of corrupt, pay-for-play guy who does business with Democrats. But here’s another snippet from the original article which wasn’t quoted at Hot Air.
Although Congel has sometimes given money to Democrats, he is a major Republican campaign fund-raiser. In 2004, he was a “Bush Ranger,” gathering more than $200,000 in bundled contributions for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort.
In the most recent election cycle, he donated money to the Republican National Committee and to the Republican presidential primary campaigns of Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney.
So if Congel is assumed to be one of the “dirty donors” looking for pay to play opportunities, I assume this means we need to begin investigating whether or not he got any favors from the Bush administration, Rudy, Fred or Mitt?
I understand how Republicans are turning over every possible stone in an effort to discredit the Obama administration before he even finds the bathrooms in the West Wing, but this story has the marks of one that will turn out to be a dry hole. If it turns out that one of Patrick Fitzgerald’s buddies is digging into this story and might have some wiretaps for us, get back to me. Until then, this is looking like smoke and mirrors.