Peter Paul demand letter to Hillary Clinton
July 16, 2001
Senator Hillary Clinton
U.S.Senate
Washington, DC
Via Hand Delivery
Dear Hillary:
It is with profound regret and extreme disappointment that I am forced to write this letter to you reminding you of your responsibility as a Federal elected official to comply with the laws and regulations of the United States that you have sworn to defend and protect, and as a citizen, the same laws and regulations that govern your individual conduct.
As you are personally aware, in May, 2000, I was induced by your National Campaign Finance Director, David Rosen, your friend Jim Levin and your volunteer Hollywood talent coordinator and fundraiser, Aaron Tonken, to become the largest individual contributor to your Senatorial campaign in an effort to begin building a closer relationship with your husband in anticipation of his departure from public service to the private sector.
As you recall, I hosted a private fundraising luncheon for you at Spago, and a fund raising tea at Mrs. Gershman’s Beverly Hills Estate on June 9, 2000, and paid certain expenses in connection with that event in addition to making a commitment to contribute $150,000 in stock to your campaign. I subsequently committed to produce and underwrite the largest fundraiser of your campaign, which was also a Hollywood farewell tribute to the President, on August 12, 2000, at the Brentwood estate of our mutual friend Ken Roberts. Rather than make an additional contribution to your campaign, I was induced to underwrite all the expenses of the reception, concert and private dinner so that David Rosen could galvanize your faltering fundraising momentum and generate much needed “hard money” contributions net of any and all expenses. In good faith I fulfilled that commitment, even as the expenses skyrocketed from a projected $500,000 to well over $2 million!
No expense was spared to produce a poignant and historic evening when the luminaries of the entertainment industry shared their love and appreciation for the contributions made by the President and yourself during the previous eight years of the Clinton Administration. As you requested, I hired your friend Gary Smith to produce the concert part of the event, which he did superbly through his lend out company Black Ink Productions. Although Gary’s unconscionable fee of $850,000 for the concert was reduced at my request by $50,000 due to your personal intervention, you should know that Gary subsequently tacked on another $75,000 for his personal production fee which I was not made aware of until the day before the event. Further, Gary demonstrated the most egregious unprofessionalism in the way he sabotaged my script for Stan Lee’s introduction and the activities of his film crews that were charged with documenting the event. To add insult to injury, he fabricated additional expenses that Ken Roberts chastised him for, for which he held hostage the tapes of the event for three months. In addition, $20,000 is unaccounted for as a final withdrawal that is not documented from the segregated event bank account I am attaching a statement for.
I enjoyed your warmth and friendship during this period from June through August, 2000, when you and the President made my wife and I feel like family. Your warm letters and phone calls, your embraces and kisses when we met, the meals and events we shared together, and especially your and Chelsea’s heartfelt introduction of my wife to Barbara Streisand, led me to believe that we had succeeded in forging a real family friendship. Unfortunately these feelings were, at best, short lived.
Starting with your campaign spokesmen’s “Judas Strategy,” employed when they twice disavowed me, and my contributions to your campaign, to the Washington Post, thereby lying to the people and the media, I witnessed that side of your personality that I had always believed was an invention of your political enemies. I continued with the erroneous assumption that it was only political expediency for your Senate campaign and the national Presidential campaign, that required less than honest candor in acknowledging our relationship because of the sensitivities generated by my anti-Communist misjudgments a quarter century ago. I even believed David Rosen’s and Jim Levin’s reassurances that after the election we could resume our budding friendship.
Just a few days after the events in Los Angeles I was forced to ignore your campaign’s gutless and insulting decision to return the $2,000 check I gave you as part of the June 8, luncheon commitment, and the insensitivity of your statements that you would not accept ANY contribution whatsoever from me. This statement was made only days after you received the largest individual campaign contribution to a single candidate ever recorded in American history! So, a month later when David Rosen begged me to further contribute $55,000 to an abortion rights group that you had committed to based on my commitment relating to the Spago lunch, I ignored my better judgment and the more than $1.5 million I had already contributed on your behalf, so that your word would not be compromised.
Thereafter, from November, 2000, I was preoccupied with the business and market issues that all internet related companies were dealing with, as well as more insidious and nefarious issues relating to actions taken by company management and others intent on ruining me and the company I founded. When your promised support for the first global broadcast of the Hollywood Christmas Parade we produced did not materialize, and the invitations offered to dinners and gatherings were withdrawn, and after making the final contribution on your behalf at David Rosen’s direction in October, the only communication I received from you, the President, or your intermediaries, was an irate e-mail from Jim Levin in November protesting my failure to make a $250,000 payment to the Clinton Library as I had committed to do in August.
Thereafter, the “dot com” meltdown of the last quarter of 2000, resulted in my company, Stan Lee Media, along with more than 230 others, going into bankruptcy and the usual fingerpointing between management and others regarding whose fault it was. In my case, because of the Washington Post articles about my Cuban and cocaine convictions from the late 1970’s, I became a vulnerable scapegoat by all those wishing to avoid responsibility for their willful misconduct.
Thus, in late February, after I had made numerous calls for several months to David Rosen about how you were going to report my contributions to the FEC to ensure their legality, I was shocked to discover through internet access to your campaign filings, that all my contributions to you and your campaign were not reported, that the only report, relating to the Hollywood Gala, was false as to the identity of the donor and the amount donated, and that you had thereby made me a co-conspirator with you and others in violating various Federal statutes and regulations.
This was the fatal blow to any vestiges of friendship and respect that I may have retained towards you and the President, and it is this final betrayal that has precipitated my new adversarial posture towards you both, and your co-conspirators. I am now required by my conscience and sense of fair play to demand that you abide by the laws you swore to defend and uphold, which includes the requirement set out in Title 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations that you return all “illegal contributions within 30 days of determining the illegality.”
The accounting provided in the attached copy of my Federal Election Commission complaint shall also serve as my notice to you and your Senate Campaign Committee, of the amount of the direct, in-kind contribution I made to you and your Senate campaign, and no other, and of the statutory requirement you have to return such monies, which statute you have been in violation of since March 1, 2001, thirty days after the amended filing of your FEC report which through their false reports made my contributions illegal de jure.
Rather than perpetuating the signature Clinton ethic of denial, semantical and rhetorical responses to valid requests and questions, and stonewalling, it is time to accept your responsibility as a Federal elected official and do the right thing according to the letter of the law, the position your campaign spokespeople have taken, and natural laws of right and ethical conduct, and return the contributions I made, which you have by your collective actions, made illegal. Please direct your refund to my counsel at Judicial Watch.
Govern Yourself Accordingly,
Peter F. Paul
So, how does she get out of this one?