Whoa: DNC emails discuss rewarding donors with fed-gov't appointments

Old and busted: Most transparent administration ever! New hotness: The system is rigged, and not just in the Democratic primaries. The campaign-finance watchdog site Open Secrets reports that DNC e-mails published by Wikileaks show DNC officials apparently coordinating with the Obama administration to reward donors with appointments to boards and commissions:

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Email exchanges involving top officials at theDemocratic National Committee released along with private documents by WikiLeaks show that DNC officials hoped to reward top donors and insiders with appointments to federal boards and commissions in coordination with the White House.

The revelations give an inside look into how the Democratic Party attempted to leverage its access and influence with the White House to bring in cash.

In an April 20, 2016 email, DNC National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan canvassed what appears to be the committee’s finance department – its fundraising office – for names of people (mainly donors) to reward with federal appointments on boards and commissions.

That email exchange yielded a list compiled by DNC Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer and emailed to Kaplan on April 26 titled “Boards and Commissions Names_Final,” which listed the names of twenty-three DNC donors and insiders.

Here’s the e-mail from Kaplan to the team handling the big-time donors and bundlers to the Democratic Party:

kaplan-email

So much for the best and brightest, eh? Get those appointments while you can!! Kaplan sent this three months ago, so this looks like either a last-chance opportunity to burnish resumés before Democrats have to vacate the White House, or an early-bird special if Hillary Clinton manages to win the election.

I’d guess it’s the latter, as this sounds very … familiar. Rajiv Fernando managed to get himself appointed to the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), a group which oversees US nuclear and security policies, despite having no qualifications for their mission. Except two: He donated a lot of money to the Democratic Party, and to the Clinton Foundation. When ABC first started sniffing out the Fernando appointment, he abruptly resigned.

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Now, in truth these boards and commissions are routinely used to reward supporters. Usually, however, that isn’t handled by fundraising staff so as to avoid making it into an explicit quid pro quo. It would be handled as Clinton’s team handled the Fernando appointment, which still wound up embarrassing them. This is as blatant as it gets, and should result in serious probes of the White House’s connection to these pay-for-play fundraising efforts at the DNC. After all, Kaplan had to be sending this data to someone over there to make this scheme work.

However, they may skate by on the fact that none of the people listed have managed to find an appointment … at least, not yet. And now that this has been exposed, they may be waiting a very long time for their resumé enhancements.

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