Kenneth P. Vogel is chief investigative reporter at Politico and author of Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp—on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics (PublicAffairs).

In December, the board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation approved a salary of more than $395,000, plus bonus, for its Yale-educated CEO, Eric Braverman, while voting to extend his board term through 2017, according to sources familiar with the arrangement. Braverman, who had worked with Chelsea Clinton at the prestigious McKinsey & Company consultancy, had been brought in with the former first daughter’s support to help impose McKinsey-like management rigor to a foundation that had grown into a $2 billion charitable powerhouse.

But in January, only weeks after the board's show of support and just a year and a half after Braverman arrived, he abruptly resigned, and sources tell Politico his exit stemmed partly from a power struggle inside the foundation between and among the coterie of Clinton loyalists who have surrounded the former president for decades and who helped start and run the foundation. Some, including the president’s old Arkansas lawyer Bruce Lindsey, who preceded Braverman as CEO, raised concerns directly to Bill Clinton about the reforms implemented by Braverman, according to sources, and felt themselves marginalized by the growing influence of Chelsea Clinton and the new CEO she had helped recruit.


The previously untold saga of Braverman’s brief, and occasionally fraught tenure trying to navigate the Clintons’ insular world highlights the challenges the family has faced trying to impose rigorous oversight onto a vast global foundation that relies on some of the same loyal megadonors Hillary Clinton will need for the presidential run sources have said she is all but certain to launch later this year.

Already, a spate of recent news stories in Politico and elsewhere have highlighted questions about the foundation’s aggressive fundraising both before and during Braverman’s tenure, including the news that the foundation had been accepting contributions from foreign governments with lax oversight from the State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. The foundation has been Clinton’s main public platform since she left State in February 2013.

The hiring a few months later of Braverman, who had been a partner in McKinsey’s Washington office, was seen as validation of Chelsea Clinton’s view that the foundation needed to address recommendations from a 2011 audit for tighter governance and budgeting, as well as more comprehensive policies to vet donors and avoid conflicts of interest.

When Braverman arrived to replace Lindsey as CEO, he moved quickly to adopt the auditor’s recommendations, and then some. He diversified the foundation’s board beyond the Clintons and their longtime political allies and restructured its finance department. He oversaw the creation of a $250 million endowment and implemented data-driven analytics to measure the effectiveness of foundation programs.

No public explanation was offered for Braverman’s resignation.

But sources say Braverman’s modernization efforts were hampered by the occasionally conflicting visions of the three Clintons, and their rival staff factions. Some told Braverman, “You don’t know how this place works,” while others—including Lindsey—second-guessed Braverman to Bill Clinton, according to sources familiar with the situation. They said a repeated refrain from the old guard was that Braverman was in it for his own glory.

Braverman referred requests for comment to the foundation.

Asked if Braverman was pushed out, foundation officials pointed to an official resignation statement, in which Braverman thanked the foundation and the Clintons praised his leadership in helping “improve our governance structure, increase coordination across the Foundation and build better internal processes.”

The foundation announced that, while it was looking for a permanent successor, longtime Clinton loyalist Maura Pally would serve as acting CEO. Other than a stint at Bloomberg Philanthropies (which has donated more than $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation’s efforts), Pally had spent most of her professional life working for the Clintons, from Bill Clinton’s White House to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and subsequent State Department term.

This account of Braverman’s foundation tenure is based on interviews with about a dozen current and former Clinton Foundation staffers, Braverman associates, donors and Clinton allies, most of whom cited the coming presidential race in declining to be identified.

At left, Eric Braverman. At right, Bill Clinton with Bruce Lindsey, the former president's old Arkansas lawyer, who sources say complicated reforms pushed by Eric Braverman and Chelsea Clinton. | Left: Moshe Zusman Photography Studio; right: Getty Images

Most praised Braverman and said he accomplished much of what he set out to do, leaving the foundation in a strong position headed into 2016. And some dismissed recent scrutiny of the foundation’s fundraising and management as a function of the news media’s “total obsession” with the Clintons, in the words of Chris Ruddy, the CEO of the conservative media outlet Newsmax, which last year pledged $1 million to the foundation. A longtime participant in the foundation-backed Clinton Global Initiative, Ruddy said, “I don’t see that the ongoing work of the foundation will be undermined in any way by any leadership changes that have taken place.”

But some family allies think Braverman’s experience offers lessons that could help Hillary Clinton as she chooses from the scores of operatives jockeying to work for a 2016 campaign. “This is the story of their lives. They’ve always been torn between the super, super loyalists who are protecting them and the extremely competent people who don’t owe their whole careers to them,” said one former Clinton aide. “They need to try to strike that balance. And her campaign, at least so far, seems to be bringing in competent people who haven’t all come from that world.”

In many ways, what played out over the past two years at the foundation was the story of Chelsea Clinton’s rise. Her power now at the foundation cannot be overstated, according to sources with knowledge of its workings, who say no major decisions occur without her input. Now 35 and with the official title of vice chair at the foundation, Chelsea Clinton is expected to be a key adviser to her mother in the presidential campaign.

“I’ve often joked that she would be the ultimate campaign manager,” said a longtime Clinton operative, who said that the foundation was an ideal place for Chelsea Clinton “to come sit at the adult table. And Chelsea is unique in that she was always at the adult table, but now she can participate.”

Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said, "Chelsea has a tremendous positive influence on the foundation, and we’re thrilled to have it. Publicly, she’s been an incredibly strong and effective advocate for the foundation and its programs. Internally, she’s done everything she can to improve the way the foundation operates and make sure it’s in the best possible position to continue helping people around the world.”

But Chelsea Clinton’s rise at times has seemed to threaten some veteran Clinton aides who had carved out influential—and lucrative—positions after long service with her parents. She is blamed in some quarters for marginalizing both Lindsey and Doug Band, who rose from the president’s body man to build and help run the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative. A third Clinton veteran, Ira Magaziner, saw his portfolio at the foundation diminished during Braverman’s tenure, and sources say Magaziner’s role remains under scrutiny.

Magaziner, who was a Rhodes scholar with Bill Clinton in the late 1960s and spearheaded Hillary Clinton’s botched health care reform push in the 1990s, was paid $415,000 in foundation salary and consulting fees in 2013 to help run two programs, the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Magaziner left the climate project late last year after Braverman brought in new leadership, but he remains CEO of the health initiative. The health group’s board—which includes Magaziner—at the end of last year voted unanimously to initiate an internal governance review by the New York law firm Simpson Thacher, according to foundation officials.

Sources say the review was expected to recommend management improvements. But in a statement sent on behalf of Magaziner, the initiative’s spokeswoman Maura Daley said the review found good fiscal health and “significant programmatic success over the years” and that the initiative’s board, in receiving the report at its last meeting, “expressed strong support for the successful leadership of CHAI.”

And foundation officials disputed suggestions that Chelsea Clinton was seeking to marginalize Magaziner.

Chelsea Clinton had a hand in initiating the 2011 audit—also by Simpson Thacher—that paved the way for Braverman’s hiring and reforms, partly by raising concerns that seemed directed at Lindsey and Band. The foundation paid Lindsey $395,000 in 2013. He served as CEO until July of that year, when he was replaced by Braverman, but a source who has worked for all three Clintons challenged the notion that Chelsea Clinton sought to marginalize Lindsey, pointing out that he also became chairman of the foundation’s board in 2013.

Band left the Clinton Global Initiative staff in 2010, though he remained on the board into 2013, when the board was disbanded. At one point he was earning $90,000 a year for helping run the Initiative while also on the payroll of Clinton’s personal office. He later earned huge consulting fees through a firm he started in 2011 called Teneo, which counted a few foundation donors as clients and also paid Bill Clinton as an adviser. The New Republic, in a lengthy 2013 examination, reported that Chelsea Clinton became concerned that Band’s overlapping business interests could backfire on the Clintons, though a 2014 book asserted that Chelsea Clinton initially wanted to be a part of Teneo.

The former Clinton aide said “Doug gets conveniently blamed” for a lot of institutional issues at the foundation.

For years, the foundation had no review process for determining executive compensation, according to its tax filings through 2009. In those years, the filings noted that it was “working to put such a process in place.”

The 2011 Simpson Thacher review found that the foundation needed tighter fiscal oversight, including “clearer policy guidance and enforcement to manage potential conflicts of interest,” which was seen at least partly directed toward Band and his firm, though others also have earned outside income while working at the foundation. For instance, Magaziner’s consulting firm was paid by clients such as Corning, though foundation officials say that relationship ended in 2011.

Neither Lindsey nor Band responded to requests for comment, but foundation officials say that under Braverman’s stewardship all the audit recommendations have been addressed.

"Simpson Thacher gave us a way forward. Under Eric, those recommendations were implemented, embraced by the organization, and continue to make our work more effective,” said Minassian, the foundation spokesman. “The Foundation is grateful for Eric’s leadership, and his departure doesn’t change the course or mission of the Foundation.”

The Simpson Thacher review—which also recommended “more strategic and budgetary planning”—came after the resignations of several midlevel philanthropic professionals who were reportedly unhappy with the influence of longtime Clinton allies at the top.

Getty Images

The foundation, which started with nine staffers in Little Rock, now employs more than 2,000 people around the world through various initiatives and affiliates. Most program staffers and executives have philanthropic backgrounds and did not come up with the Clintons through political channels. And well before the modernization push, Bill Clinton had already notched some major accomplishments through the foundation, such as brokering agreements with drug companies to increase global access to HIV medication. The Simpson Thacher review noted that the dozens of employees and officials interviewed by the firm “uniformly praised the effectiveness of the Foundation.”

But it also hinted at deficiencies that seemed to land at the doorstep of Lindsey, who had been living part-time in Arkansas. It recommended that the foundation consider hiring a president who “would be based in New York on a full-time basis” and suggested creating donor-vetting policies, as well as a committee to conduct annual audits, review whistleblower complaints and vet potential conflicts of interest.

Some within the foundation urged that Lindsey be replaced by a political veteran with close ties to the Clintons who could carry out the Simpson Thacher recommendations. The argument was that major reforms should be balanced with political sensitivities ahead of 2016 and Hillary Clinton’s presumed presidential run. Leslie Dach and Sally Susman—high-ranking executives at Walmart and Pfizer, respectively, who both worked in the Clinton administration—were considered, according to sources. They didn’t respond to requests for comment, and a foundation official said, “We do not comment on our hiring processes.”

Chelsea Clinton’s push for Braverman prevailed. On paper, he seemed the perfect guy to prepare the organization for a future where the once—and possibly future—first family wouldn’t be around to call the shots and raise the cash.

Braverman had developed a reputation as one of McKinsey’s “foremost experts on the transformation of complex public institutions and on government innovation,” according to a biography posted by the Yale School of Management, where he lectured regularly. The 39-year-old also holds undergraduate and law degrees from the university, and he was the point person for McKinsey’s corporate involvement in the Clinton Global Initiative, which estimated McKinsey’s contributions at more than $500,000 (Braverman personally donated more than $25,000 to the foundation through 2014, according to its records). He had experience helping to restructure banks, technology companies and all manner of government agencies, including working with Haiti and Bill Clinton to boost the accountability and transparency of that island nation’s recovery efforts after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

But things got tricky for Braverman at the foundation once he started hiring his own people.

“Some of the people who had been there longer knew how the place ran, but they maybe didn’t come through the philanthropy world,” said the former Clinton aide. “And you have to take that job knowing that, at the end of the day, it’s the family’s name that’s on it. I don’t care if you’re friends with Chelsea, there is a balance, and from what I understand he didn’t get that balance right.”

Complicating matters was Lindsey, who remained involved as board chairman. While Lindsey, now 66, had been limited for a time by the effects of a stroke, he still had a key currency: a deep relationship with Bill Clinton. The two young Arkansans first met in the late 1960s working in Washington for Sen. J. William Fulbright. Later, Lindsey worked on Clinton’s gubernatorial and presidential campaigns before following the newly elected president back to Washington in 1993 as a top administration adviser. From a coveted West Wing office, Lindsey served as “captain” of his old friend’s defense against impeachment proceedings.

At the foundation, sources say, Lindsey and other longtime Bill Clinton confidants hampered Braverman’s reform efforts by warning the former president not to allow too many changes that could be interpreted as a course correction. The result was that Braverman would develop consensus around reforms, but, when he tried to implement them, the old guard would try to undercut him, say people familiar with his tenure. They say he lacked the political background or allies to navigate between the Clintons and their sometimes divergent power bases.

One foundation donor and longtime Clinton supporter who is personally fond of Braverman recalled exchanging pleasantries with him at a recent foundation event, but wondering about his role at the foundation. “I had no idea he was running the place,” said the donor.

Some bristled when Braverman hired a foundation media relations director. Critics complained to the New York Times that it was an effort to boost Braverman’s own profile and grumbled that his new hire—Brian Cookstra—had been a lead spokesman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services during its clumsy Obamacare rollout.

Braverman’s defenders contend that it had nothing to do with boosting his profile, noting he seldom even talked with the media. They considered it a low blow that highlighted the institutional resistance to expanding the foundation beyond Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s fiefdoms.

Another flashpoint came in 2013, when the foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, an elevation of the Clintons’ daughter that struck some of the old guard as presumptuous and troubling. It was one thing, they grumbled, to add the name of a former first lady who had also been elected a United States senator and was coming off an acclaimed stint as secretary of state—but their kid?

They worried that the family was letting her use the foundation to establish herself as a serious player in her own right. She expanded the foundation mission into new causes—including curbing elephant poaching and ivory harvesting—that seemed peripheral to its core missions of fighting AIDS, climate change and childhood obesity, or Hillary Clinton’s efforts to increase opportunity for women and girls.

And some rolled their eyes when the foundation’s $250 million was invested with a firm called Summit Rock Advisers, where Chelsea Clinton’s best friend Nicole Davison Fox is managing director. The two were classmates at Sidwell Friends School, and Davison Fox interned in the Clinton White House. She later served as matron of honor in Clinton’s wedding, and her husband was a founding employee of the hedge fund started by Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky.

Davison Fox did not respond to requests for comment, but foundation officials pointed out that her firm was selected through a competitive bidding process in which 15 firms were invited to participate. And while Davison Fox played a role pitching her firm, officials said Chelsea Clinton did not participate in the final selection of Summit Rock once her friend’s firm became a finalist.

Most major donors came to the foundation through their relationships with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and many still seem to think of it as the former president’s foundation.

Andrew Tobias, a longtime Democratic donor and Clinton loyalist, praised Bill Clinton's ability to bring together affluent people from across the political spectrum to support good causes. The treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, Tobias has personally donated more than $250,000 to the foundation's efforts and described himself as "really proud to have been a very small part of this. It's amazing how many millions of lives here and around the world President Clinton has touched and improved—even saved—since leaving office, and how many business leaders affiliated with both parties he'd helped to energize in constructive, creative pursuits and partnerships."

Foundation fundraising has posed complications for groups trying to raise money for Hillary Clinton’s nascent campaign, as Politico has reported. Some top-dollar donors who had recently given to the foundation’s endowment drive have resisted solicitations to pledge seven-figure sums to a key super PAC seeking to support the expected Clinton campaign. And some allies working to pave the way for the campaign worry that the longer Hillary Clinton continues high-dollar fundraising for the foundation, the more difficult it will be for the super PACs to collect their own big checks.

A foundation official said “the Clintons will continue to fundraise for the Clinton Foundation as appropriate.” And sources say the foundation will be the beneficiary of two upcoming fundraisers around the time of its planned annual gala on March 4 in New York, which will feature a performance by Carole King and is expected to be one of the Clintons’ final major events before the campaign. The foundation is also planning a fundraiser hosted by Tony James, billionaire president of the private equity firm Blackstone, and a March 9 fundraiser hosted by venture capitalist Deven Parekh that’s being billed as a final chance to hang out with Clinton before she kicks off her campaign.

Braverman’s defenders say that growing the endowment, which was in the $20 million range when he arrived, was among his major goals. They say he always intended to stabilize the foundation and then move on. In fact, he kept his townhouse in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, while accepting a housing allowance for temporary digs in New York.

He did not want to preside over the foundation during a presidential campaign, when it would become harder to continue making changes, say sources familiar with his thinking, who suggested that Braverman decided it was best to leave early this year, before the presidential campaign lurched into high gear.

“You come in, you fix shit and then you leave,” said one person familiar with the situation. “In some ways, that is the apex of management consulting.”