According to a damning new report from Fox News, a defense contractor seeking approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department for billions in foreign arms sales hired a trio of lobbyists who had raised funds for her 2008 presidential campaign (and would later for her 2016 campaign). Among them was Heather Podesta, then-sister in law to Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, who was a Senior Adviser to the State Department at the time.
As lobbying records
indicate, these Clinton, Inc. lobbyists, who had little experience with foreign
arms deals previously, raked in hundreds of thousands in fees for “engag[ing]
the Executive Branch on the economic benefits of foreign military sales,” were
quickly able to secure approval for $26 billion in contracts for foreign sales
all before Clinton left office, and their representation was no longer needed.
Fox
News segment and full
report below:
Podesta Relative
Earned Six-Figure Fees Lobbying Clinton's State Dept. During His Tenure There
By James Rosen
October 27, 2016
EXCLUSIVE: Amid the
tumult of the 2016 presidential campaign, John Podesta is best known as Hillary
Clinton’s campaign chairman and the individual from whose private account
WikiLeaks is presently publishing some 50,000 hacked emails.
Released in daily
batches, these documents have laid bare the inner workings and tensions of the
Clinton campaign in an unprecedented way, while also offering insights into the
operations of the Clinton Foundation and the State Department in the years when
Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee, served as secretary of state.
At that time, when
Clinton was traveling to a record number of foreign countries, Podesta, a
former White House chief of staff under President Clinton, held dual titles at
the State Department: as a senior advisor – entitled to an annual salary of
$130,000 never paid him, the department maintains – and as a member of a
prestigious foreign policy advisory board Secretary Clinton created. Records
obtained from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management show Podesta’s tenure at
State extended from Sept. 25, 2011 to Jan. 4, 2014.
For several months in
2012, Clinton’s final year as secretary of state, Raytheon, the leading defense
contractor, hired Podesta’s sister-in-law, Heather Podesta, as a lobbyist,
federal records show.
Raytheon was looking
to enlarge its share of foreign military sales – transfers of advanced weapons
systems to other countries that are reviewed and approved by the Department of
State, then implemented by the Department of Defense – and was beefing up its
lobbying operation to accomplish that goal before Secretary Clinton left office.
On the LD-2 lobbying
disclosure form completed by her company, Heather Podesta + Partners, LLC, in
July 2012, the veteran lawyer and Democratic fundraiser listed in the space
provided for a description of her lobbying activities, “Engaged the Executive Branch
on the economic benefits of foreign military sales.” In the space requesting
the specific locales of her lobbying, Ms. Podesta listed the White House and
the State Department.
At the same time,
Raytheon retained two other lobbyists, John Merrigan and Matt Bernstein, both
associated with the powerhouse D.C. law firm DLA Piper. All three of these
lobbyists, including Ms. Podesta, were major donors or bundlers to Hillary
Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Federal records show they have raised
hundreds of thousands of dollars for Clinton’s campaigns and earned hundreds of
thousands of dollars lobbying her State Department.
In the final three
quarters of 2012, DLA Piper earned some $360,000 in lobbying fees from
Raytheon, courting the State Department and other agencies, while Ms. Podesta,
within that same time frame, received $100,000 from Raytheon for the same
purpose.
The gambit appears to
have worked: Records maintained by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the
arm of the Defense Department that coordinates the transfers of weapons systems
once they have received State’s approval, show Raytheon as a prime contractor
in at least seventeen foreign military sales in 2012, worth an estimated total
of $26 billion. Of those contracts, three with the Gulf nation of Qatar – for
missile defense, Apache attack helicopters and other materiel – accounted for
$19 billion.
An email from a
Clinton Foundation official released earlier this month, in the sixth of
Wikileaks’ postings of John Podesta’s emails, revealed that in 2011, the Qatari
government had pledged $1 million to the foundation to help former President
Clinton celebrate his birthday. In return, the email said, the Qataris sought a
“five-minute” audience with Mr. Clinton.
The individual at the
State Department who was statutorily entrusted to approve foreign military
sales was Andrew Shapiro, the assistant secretary of state for political and
military affairs. Prior to his nomination to that job, Shapiro had served as
Clinton’s national security adviser in her Senate office. Today, Shapiro is a
partner in a Washington consulting firm whose other co-founders include
Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime press aide.
After Clinton stepped
down as secretary of state in February 2013, Raytheon discontinued the services
of Heather Podesta + Partners, and ceased its use of DLA Piper at State.
While experts do not
believe any laws were broken, the affair illustrates how Washington worked in the
first Obama term, and particularly at the Clinton State Department. The
Raytheon operation bears some similarity to a pop-up store that materializes to
serve a seasonal need, such as Halloween candy or July Fourth fireworks, then
vanishes once that need has been met.
“I think this is as
close an example of pay-to-play as we’ve seen,” said Raj Shah, deputy
communications director at the Republican National Committee. “And that's why
[Raytheon] made these hires [of Heather Podesta, Merrigan and Bernstein]. …
Their experience was getting access to Hillary Clinton and raising money for
her.”
“The ultimate
responsibility, of course, rests on the Cabinet official. In this case, it'd be
the secretary of state,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby at a briefing
with reporters Wednesday. “But we do it in close coordination with DOD. … The
only considerations that are factored into the foreign military sales program
is the furtherance of foreign policy objectives of the United States of America
and not the efforts by external groups to lobby, as you say, or to influence
that decision.”
Josh Schwerin, a
spokesman for the Clinton campaign, told Fox News that the nominee “never took
action as secretary of state because of any donations and any suggestion to the
contrary is false.”
In a statement,
Raytheon said its lobbying practices and policies are fully disclosed and
comply with all federal, state and local laws. DLA Piper did not respond to a
request for comment. And Heather Podesta sent Fox News a one-sentence email
saying: “I never lobbied the Secretary or John Podesta on this matter.”
