© GettyMarc Mezvinsky, Chelsea Clinton's husband, extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents.
In a hacked email, ex-Clinton aide Doug Band claims Marc Mezvinsky traded on family ties to help his fund.
Chelsea Clinton's husband used his connections to the Clinton family and their charitable foundation to raise money for his hedge fund, according to an allegation by a longtime Clinton aide made public Sunday in hacked documents released by WikiLeaks.
Marc Mezvinsky extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, and he also relied on a billionaire foundation donor to raise money for the fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents. They also assert that he had his wife Chelsea Clinton make calls to set up meetings with potential investors who support her family's political and charitable endeavors.
The documents — a memo and an email — were written in late 2011 and early 2012, respectively, by ex-Clinton aide Doug Band. They were sent to family confidants including John Podesta, who is now serving as Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, and Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton's State Department chief of staff.
They were hacked from Podesta's Gmail account and made public Sunday in the latest batch of Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks.
At the time Band wrote them, Mezvinsky, who had been an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, was working with two partners to raise capital to launch a hedge fund of their own called Eaglevale Partners. The word among rich Clinton backers on Wall Street was that the family would look favorably on investments in Eaglevale, a major Manhattan investor told POLITICO.
That sentiment seems to be corroborated by the newly released WikiLeaks, which could provide fodder for critics, including Clinton's Republican rival Donald Trump, who argue that the Clintons have used their charitable foundation to try to enrich themselves.
Band did not respond to requests for comment Sunday, nor did representatives for Chelsea Clinton or the Clinton Foundation, while an Eaglevale spokesman declined to comment or to make Mezvinsky available for comment.
In a Jan. 2012 email to Podesta, Mills and current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Band wrote that Mezvinsky invited "several potential investors" for his hedge fund "and a few current business ones" to a foundation poker night fundraiser he had been planning.
"I assume all are contributing to the foundation, which of course isn't the point," Band wrote. "The entire plan of his has been to use this for his business."
In the same email, Band — referring to Chelsea Clinton by her initials — wrote that Mezvinsky "has CVC making some calls for him to get mtgs with some clinton people."
And, in a Nov. 2011 memo released Sunday, Band wrote that major Clinton Foundation donor Marc Lasry was "assisting Marc Mezvinsky - Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky's husband - in raising money for his new fund."
Lasry, who also employed Chelsea Clinton as a chemical industry analyst at his own hedge fund Avenue Capital Group from late 2006 until 2008, declined to comment.
But Band, in his Jan. 2012 email, suggested that Mezvinsky needed to lean on his wealthy and well-connected in-laws because he wasn't having much luck generating investor interest in his hedge fund on his own.
"His raising money for his own fund hasn't been going well," wrote Band, who at the time was engaged in something of a turf war with Chelsea Clinton. She had accused Band, who had worked closely for years with Bill Clinton at the foundation and on for-profit ventures, of using his foundation role to supplement his money-making ventures.
Mezvinsky had lodged similar complaints, Band suggested in his Jan. 2012 email, though Band contended in the email that Clinton's son-in-law "is doing precisely what he accused me of doing."
It's not clear to which donors or foundation poker event Band was referring in his email.
But the Clinton Foundation did hold several charity poker tournaments attended by all manner of rich donors and celebrities, some of which Mezvinsky attended with Bill Clinton.
And finance industry sources told POLITICO that several major donors to the Clinton Foundation and Bill and Hillary Clintons' campaigns did in fact invest in Eaglevale.
They included billionaire media mogul Haim Saban, who has donated as much as $25 million to the Clinton Foundation and whose wife sits on its board. A spokesman for Saban's company wrote in an email to POLITICO that "our company policy does not allow me to confirm and/or comment on any of Mr. Saban's personal investments."
Other investors included Lasry — whose has donated more than $90,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate and presidential campaigns, and has given as much as $300,000 to the Clinton Foundation from his personal and corporate accounts — and his brother-in-law, Craig Effron.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the British investment banker Jacob Rothschild, who donated as much as $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, also invested in Eaglevale. 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," the Times asserted.
Mezvinsky also discussed a potential investment in Eaglevale with New York venture capitalist Alan Patricof, a close Clinton family friend who has donated as much as $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and $35,000 to various Clinton campaigns. While Patricof called Mezvinsky "a very smart young man," he told POLITICO last year he did not invest with him. "I'm sure he'll do very well in his field."
So far, though, Mezvinsky's results at Eaglevale have been decidedly mixed.
Mezvinsky raised $25 million for an Eaglevale fund that bet big on a Greek economic resurgence, investing in Greek bank stocks and government debt. The fund closed this year after losing 90 percent of its value.
In a POLITICO interview last year, as the Greek fund was struggling, Lasry called Mezvinsky "an exceptionally smart guy," and said he still has confidence in him. "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."
Reader Comments
Family businesses in the fast lane. I like the bit where "...Mezvinsky raised $25 million for an Eaglevale fund that bet big on a Greek economic resurgence, investing in Greek bank stocks and government debt..."
I find this odd because you would think that being as close to the money and control levers as Mezvinsky is, he would make a more thoughtful decision when investing. I wonder what else he has been up to?