Surprise! Hillary Might Have Her Own "Pay To Play" Issues

Corruption, cronyism and the Clintons? The Deuce you say!

A developer in New York state donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

Hillary Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

She also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

The bill with the tax-free bonds provision became law in October 2004, weeks before the donation, and the highway bill with the set-aside became law in August 2005, about nine months after the donation.

Congel and Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, both said there was no connection between his donation and her legislative work on his project's behalf. Reines said the senator had supported the expansion of Carousel mall "purely as part of her unwavering commitment to improving upstate New York's struggling economy, and nothing more."

Maybe we won't need Princess Caroline after all. Nah, Richardson might get the ax for this sort of thing but Hillary is like AIG...too big to fail.

Honestly, my guess is there isn't an elected politician in DC you couldn't find tangled up in relationships like this. I'm not saying it's right, far from it, but absent a direct quid pro quo, it's likely to be nothing more than an embarrassment (do either of the Clintons know what that means?) and a small bump on the way to Foggy Bottom.

Related: Popcorn futures reach all time high.

posted by DrewM. at 09:33 PM

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