Chip East/Reuters
Once she was made Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton named Declan Kelly, one of her former fundraisers, as a special economic envoy to Northern Ireland, giving him to a status “outside normal diplomatic channels,” Politico reports. While working for the State Department, Kelly, who drew no salary, reportedly was prepareding to launch his global consulting business, Teneo Holdings, which went on to employ Huma Abedin, Bill Clinton, and others. “It shows how one enterprising fundraiser was able to insinuate himself into Clinton’s inner circle and then built a 500-person, multinational consulting firm whose value, at least at first, was greatly enhanced by its founders’ closeness to the Clintons,” writes reporter Rachael Bade. Kelly met Doug Band, with whom he co-founded Teneo, while volunteering for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. According to Politico, Band is often referred to as Bill Clinton’s surrogate son. A former employee told Bade: “They used the Clinton connection to launch it. The pitch was: ‘Yes, we’ll be just as good as anybody else at doing the substantive work that you need a consulting firm to do for you—but we’re going to bring all these relationships to the table at the same time.”