Bill Clinton’s ex-right-hand man brazenly used his ties to the powerful former president to fuel his own lucrative public-relations firm, a move that even disgusted Clinton at times, a new report says.
Doug Band, Clinton’s 39-year-old former “gatekeeper’’ and an ex-boyfriend of model Naomi Campbell, at one point tried to improve his situation by helping plan a round of golf between Clinton and President Obama in 2011, according to a lengthy profile in The New Republic.
Band squeezed out Vice President Joe Biden to complete the foursome, which included Clinton, Obama and the president’s chief of staff at the time, Bill Daley, the article says.
Clinton learned that the Obama team wanted him to pitch in on the re-election trail, and he was “thrilled.’’
But Band later issued a list of demands, including that “the Obama team help pay off Hillary’s 2008 campaign debt’’ and that Clinton visit Band’s home state of Florida.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton had been hearing stories of just how far Band had gone in soliciting work for his consulting and public-relations business, Teneo, from major companies, the report says.
“Among the people who Band may have approached, Clinton was told, was media mogul Haim Saban, who has donated more than $10 million to the [Clinton] foundation,’’ the article says.
Saban’s spokesman denied the story.
But one source close to the foundation said, “One major donor complained directly to Clinton that he had been writing large checks to Band and was upset that his access to Clinton had decreased,’’ the story says.
“The president was furious,” a source said.
Clinton felt especially blind-sided when he was invited to the Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in October 2011, the story says.
When Band’s Teneo partner, Irishman Declan Kelly, spoke at the event, he suggested that it “was Teneo that had brought Clinton to Ireland.”
Additional reporting by Geoff Earle