The corruption may be moral rather than legal but this couple has such a track record of sleaze that these developments are anything but surprising:
When former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton took a family vacation in January 2002 to Acapulco, Mexico, one of their longtime supporters, Vinod Gupta, provided his company’s private jet to fly them there.
A lawsuit accuses Vinod Gupta of infoUSA of wasting the company’s money on high-profile guests.
The company, infoUSA, one of the nation’s largest brokers of information on consumers, paid $146,866 to ferry the Clintons, Mr. Gupta and others to Acapulco and back, court records show. During the next four years, infoUSA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign events.
Those expenses are cited in a lawsuit filed late last year in a Delaware court by angry shareholders of infoUSA, who assert that Mr. Gupta wasted the company’s money trying “to ingratiate himself” with his high-profile guests.
And he succeeded:
Gupta, who grew up in dire poverty in India, has said publicly that he relished his relationship with Bill Clinton. In a 2000 interview with The Washington Post, Gupta described the thrill of crawling into bed in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Hillary has her hands in his pockets as well:
InfoUSA paid $18,480 in January 2004 to fly Mrs. Clinton “and her four-person entourage” to New York from New Mexico, where she had made a campaign appearance and attended a book signing. Campaign finance records show that her committee, Friends of Hillary, made a reimbursement of $2,127 for that flight. It was not clear if any other candidate committees in New Mexico also helped defray some of the cost.
Her aides said that in addition to using campaign money to pay for some of the infoUSA flights, Mrs. Clinton used personal finances to pay for parts of any flights that did not involve political activities, like the 2002 trip to Acapulco. As for why infoUSA paid anything at all for a round-trip flight to a vacation destination, Mr. Dean insisted it was a legitimate expense.
“I’m not sure what they were doing down there,” Mr. Dean said, “but it was business related.”
I’m sure he’ll get back to us as soon as they make something up.
I’ve added a screenshot of Mr. Gupta’s web site. That’s Hillary Clinton with his family in that banner at the top of the page. You can find it, and other versions of his site, at the Internet Archive.
Bloggers React:
The Hillary Project
Even supporters of Hillary Clinton are aware that in order to win the nomination, let alone the presidency, she has to overcome the public perception of being driven by cold, calculating ambition. Could she be a ruthless politician like George W. Bush whose quest for power is not far removed from an amoral capitalist obsessed with amassing wealth? Could she be following an ethical compass whose arrow always points north even when she’s headed south?
Jeff Ellis
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: it says a lot about the modern Democratic party that the three front runners for the Presidential nomination are a guy who hasn’t even finished his first term in the U.S. Senate, a personal injury lawyer who spends $400 at the barber, and Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, far more qualified (and stronger) candidates like Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd have to fight to get attention. It leads one to an interesting question: are the Democrats just stupid?
Dick Morris
The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod “Vin” Gupta, the CEO and Chairman of InfoUSA is both long-standing and deep. A frequent Clinton donor, he has stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom, admitted to donating $1,000,000 to the Clinton Library and told the press that he’d consider an additional donation. Again, since the Clintons refuse to disclose who donated money to the library, we don’t know the total that he actually gave. In late 1999, Gupta gave $2,000,000 for Hillary Clinton’s Millennium New Year’s Eve bash. (They party cost $16 million and was closed to the press!)
Bizzy Blog
In an excellent investigative report last Sunday (may require free registration) that is part of a series on how “how businesses and investors seek to profit from the soaring number of older Americans, in ways helpful and harmful,” the New York Times’ Charles Duhigg exposed the despicable tactics of elder-scam artists and the “information services” companies that supply them the “sucker lists” they need. He may not have known that he was simultaneously exposing information that could, and arguably should, damage the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Gateway Pundit
Another day, another Clinton stinker.
Michael Zimmer
I’m sure this story will get a lot of play due to the potential ethical violations of taking gifts during a campaign, but equally important is the nature of who the Clintons appear to be benefiting from - a privacy-violating information broker. This part of the story deserves additional attention.
Old Politico
No word in the article on whether Bill or Hillary has spent any time on that yacht with the all-girl crew, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. In any event, it might help explain why Bill and Vinod are so sympatico. Even onetime Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), of Monkey Business fame, didn’t have an all girl crew for his seagoing antics in the Caribbean, although he did have a companion named Donna Rice who was all girl if the photos are anything to go by.
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One Response to “Guptagate: Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Ties with Vinod Gupta Raise Suspicion”
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June 2nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Vinod Gupta started a business school in India using his name. Students get ripped off.