1997 Special Investigation in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns by United States Senate Committee

Author:United States Senate Committee [United States Senate Committee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Nonfiction
ISBN: 4064066407315
Google: plkOEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2020-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

[Kanchanalak then] told me … to be careful about, you know, what I, be careful when I think about what I remember about the coffee because it could end up being very controversial or cause some problems for people.242 Furthermore, before Wallace was to testify before a federal grand jury inquiring into campaign finance abuses, Kanchanalak proposed helping him with financial expenses resulting from investigations into possible wrongdoing in connection with the June 18 coffee.243 Wallace, however, declined both this offer of money and Kanchanalak’s suggestion that he “be careful” about “what I remember about the coffee.” Conclusion There can be no question that the DNC used White House coffees, overnight stays, and other White House perquisites as explicit fundraising events to pay for the extraordinarily expensive media campaign the Democratic Party deemed necessary to save President Clinton and Vice President Gore from electoral defeat in 1996. For this reason, as George Stephanopoulos put it, money “became a near obsession at the highest levels” of the DNC and in the White House. Driven by this “obsession,” the DNC and White House “pulled out all the stops” to raise money, and were not above using the White House for this purpose244—just as Terry McAuliffe had suggested in his 1994 proposal for various 245 See also the section of this report on the White House’s thirst for money during the 1995–96 election cycle. 246 It is illegal to solicit campaign contributions on government property. See 18 U.S.C. § 607. 54 DNC fundraising “projects.”245 While not every overnight visit and White House coffee served this purpose, DNC and White House documents and witness testimony show that the Democratic Party and the White House unquestionably organized certain coffees and other events in the White House specifically as fundraisers—even to the point of assigning “projected revenue” totals, assigning “Fundraiser Codes,” and tracking contributions given in connection with each event.246 These events netted approximately $31.5 million for the DNC. The May 1, 1996 coffee, was but one example of what Alan Patrikoff described as the DNC’s use of coffees in its “fundraising methodology.” There is no question, therefore, that the May 1, 1996 Oval Office coffee was a DNC fundraising event. Its participants were invited only after they had each pledged to give $100,000 to the Democratic Party; these commitments were well known to the event’s DNC organizers, and the President himself was informed of them in advance of the meeting. Nor is there any serious question that these donations and the invitations to the May 1 group were causally connected. The organizer of the group, Barrie Wigmore, urged at least one of its participants, for example, to make a contribution as part of this group because doing so would make possible a visit with President Clinton. Wigmore, in turn, had himself been told by DNC fundraisers that the Democratic Party used White House coffees as part of its “fundraising methodology”—as a way to elicit donations from “key people”—and knew that the DNC considered the May 1 event to be just such a coffee.

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