Eric Braverman Tried to Change the Clinton Foundation. Then He Quit.
Complicating matters was Lindsey, who remained involved as board chairman. While Lindsey, now 66, had been limited for a time by the effects of a stroke, he still had a key currency: a deep relationship with Bill Clinton. The two young Arkansans first met in the late 1960s working in Washington for Sen. J. William Fulbright. Later, Lindsey worked on Clinton’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, before following the newly elected president back to Washington in 1993 as a top administration adviser. From a coveted West Wing office, Lindsey served as “captain” of his old friend’s defense against impeachment proceedings.
At the foundation, sources say, Lindsey and other longtime Bill Clinton confidants hampered Braverman’s reform efforts by warning the former president not to allow too many changes that could be interpreted as a course correction. The result was that Braverman would develop consensus around reforms, but, when he tried to implement them, the old guard would try to undercut him, say people familiar with his tenure. They say he lacked the political background or allies to navigate between the Clintons and their sometimes divergent power bases.
One foundation donor and longtime Clinton supporter who is personally fond of Braverman recalled exchanging pleasantries with him at a recent foundation event, but wondering about his role at the foundation. “I had no idea he was running the place,” said the donor.
Some bristled when Braverman hired a foundation media relations director. Critics complained to the New York Times that it was an effort to boost Braverman’s own profile, and grumbled that his new hire—Brian Cookstra—had been a lead spokesman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services during its clumsy Obamacare rollout.
Braverman’s defenders contend that it had nothing to do with boosting his profile, noting he seldom even talked with the media. They considered it a low blow that highlighted the institutional resistance to expanding the foundation beyond Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s fiefdoms.
Another flashpoint came in 2013, when the foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, an elevation of the Clintons’ daughter that struck some of the old guard as presumptuous and troubling. It was one thing, they grumbled, to add the name of a former first lady who had also been elected a United States senator and was coming off an acclaimed stint as secretary of state—but their kid?
They worried that the family was letting her use the foundation to establish herself as a serious player in her own right. She expanded the foundation mission into new causes—including curbing elephant poaching and ivory harvesting—that seemed peripheral to its core missions of fighting AIDS, climate change and childhood obesity, or Hillary Clinton’s efforts to increase opportunity for women and girls.
And somerolled their eyes when the foundation’s $250 million was invested with a firm called Summit Rock Advisers where Chelsea Clinton’s best friend Nicole Davison Fox is managing director. The two were classmates at Sidwell Friends School and Davison Fox interned in the Clinton White House. She later served as matron of honor in Clinton’s wedding, and her husband was a founding employee of the hedge fund started by Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky.
Davison Fox did not respond to requests for comment, but foundation officials pointed out that her firm was selected through a competitive bidding process in which 15 firms were invited to participate. And while Davison Fox played a role pitching her firm, officials said Chelsea Clinton did not participate in the final selection of Summit Rock once her friend’s firm became a finalist.
Most major donors came to foundation through their relationships with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and many still seem to think of it as the former president’s foundation.
Andrew Tobias, a longtime Democratic donor and Clinton loyalist, praised Bill Clinton's ability to bring together affluent people from across the political spectrum to support good causes. The treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, Tobias has personally donated more than $250,000 to the foundation's efforts, and described himself as "really proud to have been a very small part of this. It's amazing how many millions of lives here and around the world President Clinton has touched and improved—even saved—since leaving office, and how many business leaders affiliated with both partied he'd helped to energize in constructive, creative pursuits and partnerships."
Foundation fundraising has posed complications for groups trying to raise money for Hillary Clinton’s nascent campaign, as Politico has reported. Some top-dollar donors who had recently given to the foundation’s endowment drive have resisted solicitations to pledge seven-figure sums to a key super PAC seeking to support the expected Clinton campaign. And some allies working to pave the way for the campaign worry that the longer Hillary Clinton continues high-dollar fundraising for the foundation, the more difficult it will be for the super PACs to collect their own big checks.
A foundation official said “the Clintons will continue to fundraise for the Clinton Foundation as appropriate.” And sources say the foundation will be the beneficiary of two upcoming fundraisers around the time of its planned annual gala on March 4 in New York, which will feature a performance by Carole King, and is expected to be one of the Clintons’ final major events before the campaign. The foundation is also planning a fundraiser hosted by Tony James, billionaire president of the private equity firm Blackstone, and a March 9 fundraiser hosted by venture capitalist Deven Parekh that’s being billed as a final chance to hang out with Clinton before she kicks off her campaign.
Braverman’s defenders say that growing the endowment, which was in the $20 million range when he arrived, was among his major goals. They say he always intended to stabilize the foundation and then move on. In fact, he kept his townhouse in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, while accepting a housing allowance for temporary digs in New York.
He did not want to preside over the foundation during a presidential campaign when it would become harder to continue making changes, say sources familiar with his thinking, who suggested that Braverman decided it was best to leave early this year, before the presidential campaign lurched into high gear.
“You come in, you fix shit and then you leave,” said one person familiar with the situation. “In some ways, that is the apex of management consulting.”
Kenneth P. Vogel is chief investigative reporter at Politico and author of Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp—on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics (PublicAffairs).