1997 Special Investigation in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns. United States Senate Committee
to help a candidate’s campaign for office. Unlike official “campaign” contributions, however, DNC “soft” money could be raised from wealthy donors in unlimited quantities. By diverting DNC funds to campaign advertising controlled by the White House, the Democrats had the best of all possible worlds: de facto “hard” money from key donors in unlimited quantities.
Senior White House and DNC staff developed new ways to use the Presidency to raise campaign money. Among the favors merchandised were access to senior decision makers, perks such as “overnights” at the White House, Presidential coffees at the White House (even in the Oval Office), flights on Air Force One, seats in the President’s box at Kennedy Center, and use of the White House pool and tennis courts.
In this stampede to use the White House for every conceivable variety of fundraiser, a number of alarmingly unsavory characters gained access to the President in return for campaign contributions. One was Chinese arms dealer Wang Jun. Roger Tamraz, a major DNC donor, was allowed to meet with the President on several occasions despite the NSC’s opposition and clear warnings that Tamraz might damage U.S. foreign policy interests in Central Asia. As noted, Ted Sioeng, a foreign national with suspiciously close ties to the Chinese government, sat at the head table with the President or Vice President at several fundraisers and lunched with Vice President Gore at the Hsi Lai Temple.
White House Coffees
Perhaps nothing illustrates this merchandising of the Presidency better than the DNC’s White House “coffees”—fundraising events at which major donors were provided access to the President in exchange for their campaign contributions.
Between January 11, 1995 and August 23, 1996, the White House hosted 103 coffees. Most lasted at least an hour, and the President attended the vast majority of them. Approximately 60 of these were DNC-sponsored coffees, 92 percent of the guests at which were major Democratic Party contributors. These guests made contributions during the 1996 election cycle of $26.4 million, an average contribution of over $54,000 per person, with one-third of their total donations, some $7.7 million, given within a month of the donor’s attendance at a White House coffee. For example, the five persons attending a coffee on May 1, 1996, in the Oval Office itself each contributed $100,000 to the DNC one week later.
White House and DNC officials have strenuously denied that the coffees were “fundraisers.” Numerous DNC documents, however, including detailed memoranda Ickes prepared for the President and Vice President, tell a different story, referring to these White House events as “political/fundraising coffees.” These documents carefully track the “projected revenue” that would be raised by each event—to the point of specifying amounts “in hand” (i.e., collected to date) and the proportion of each coffee’s projected revenue that would be placed in the party’s “hard money” and “soft money” bank accounts. While not every White House coffee was a fundraising event, most clearly were.
The coffees also demonstrate the extensive amount of time the President was willing to spend with small groups of major donors, and the extraordinary influence such donors had over the White House and the President’s schedule. The June 18, 1996 coffee organized by John Huang is a case in point. The only guests who were originally to attend this coffee were three foreign nationals from the CP Group, a Thai conglomerate. They were clients of Pauline Kanchanalak, a DNC fundraiser and lobbyist from Thailand. When DNC officials raised concerns about the propriety of such a coffee, “some people that might be potential [legal] donors, [i.e.,] American citizens,” were invited at the last moment. It is clear that the coffee’s essential purpose was to sell the President’s time to Kanchanalak—who, with her mother-in-law, donated $235,000 in to the DNC the next day—to make her look good in front of her clients.6 Even worse, the only guests professing to have any memory of the event recall Huang openly soliciting DNC contributions, in the presence of the President. This was clearly illegal.
Telephone Solicitations
In addition to attending many major fundraisers and innumerable smaller events such as coffees, the President—and, particularly, the Vice President—were willing to use the power of their offices to make direct telephone solicitations for money. Vice President Gore made approximately 45 phone solicitations from his White House office. These calls may have raised as much as $800,000 for the DNC.
Based upon the premise that these telephone calls raised only “soft” money, the Attorney General has rejected suggestions that she recommend the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate whether these calls violated a federal criminal law prohibiting the solicitation of campaign contributions on federal property. The Committee disagrees with her view that raising “soft money” on federal property is permitted, but significantly, even under the Attorney General’s view, the solicitation of “hard” money on federal property is a crime. As DNC general counsel Joe Sandler revealed to the Committee, of the money raised by Vice President Gore’s telephone solicitations from the White House, more than $100,000 was deposited into the DNC’s “hard money” accounts. Indeed, the Vice President continued to make telephone solicitations even after being advised by a DNC memorandum in February 1996 that it was DNC policy to place a certain proportion of the money thus raised into “hard money” accounts.7
The All-Consuming Fundraising Effort
In some ways, the most troubling result of the White House’s and DNC’s ceaseless quest for campaign funding is the great amount of time the President and the Vice President themselves actually spent raising money. As Vice President Gore himself noted, “we can raise the [necessary] money … ONLY IF—the President and I actually do the events, the calls, the coffees, etc. … And we will have to lose considerable time to the campaign trail to do all of this fundraising.”
Simply put, 25 years after Congress passed election reform laws intended to insulate the President from an unseemly and potentially corrupting involvement with campaign money, President Clinton spent enormous amounts of time during the 1996 election cycle raising money. In the ten months prior to the 1996 election, President Clinton attended more than 230 fundraising events, which raised $119,000,000. The President maintained such a pace for over a year before the election, often attending fundraisers five and six days each week. According to Presidential campaign advisor Dick Morris, President Clinton “would say ‘I haven’t slept in three days; every time I turn around they want me to be at a fundraiser … I cannot think, I cannot do anything. Every minute of my time is spent at these fundraisers.’ ” This frenzied pursuit of campaign contributions raises obvious and disturbing questions. Can any President who spends this much time raising money focus adequately upon affairs of state? Is it even possible for such a President to distinguish between fundraising and policymaking?
Other Improper or Illegal Fundraising Activities
The unfortunate results of the DNC’s chase for money were not limited to its receipt of illegal foreign money and the merchandising of the White House itself. DNC pressures to change government policy developed in response to the wishes of major party donors.
The Roger Tamraz Affair
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