Teneo, where Bill was a paid adviser, represented firms who had often either paid for Bill's speeches or donated to the Clinton Foundation. Also involved in Teneo was Declan Kelly.
An SGE at State for a while, Kelly joined Teneo in 2011. Teneo's clients included Fortune 500 companies, governments, and high-net-worth individuals. The companies it represented included Coca- Cola, UBS, and Standard Chartered.
The arrangement worked seamlessly until March 2012, when Bill ceased to be a Teneo adviser. One of Teneo's clients was MF Global, the commodities brokerage run by Clinton friend John Corzine. MF Global collapsed after a series of highly leveraged trades.
Some customers accused the firm of raiding their private accounts to shore up its finances after risky bets went sour. When news broke that MF Global was a client, Bill apparently felt it best to sever his ties.
SGE Abedin played a central role in everything Hillary did. She assured a Senate committee that there was no cross-pollination between her job at the State Department and her other work at Clinton-connected entities.
She explained that she provided “strategic advice and consulting services" to Teneo's management team but did not provide "insights about the department, my work with the secretary or any government information to which I may have had access." But public concerns were not so easily allayed.
As the New York Times put it, “the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin's work in the high echelons of one of the government's most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider."
The link is here.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/friends-bill-state-dept-attention-haiti-relief-article-1.2827361
SGE Caitlin Klevorick, who worked as a consultant to Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, joined the State Department in 2009 as a special assistant to Cheryl Mills. In that capacity she "provided expert knowledge and advice to the counselor and the chief of staff and other department officials on a variety of important foreign policy issues," according to the State Department. SGE status allowed her to keep her firm CBK Strategies, where she simultaneously worked for corporate clients.
Cheryl Mills herself, Hillary's longtime chief of staff, was also granted SGE status so she could continue to direct Haiti relief efforts at the State Department while returning to work for the Clinton Foundation after Hillary resigned.
The link is here.
SGE Elizabeth Bagley, who married into the RJR Reynolds tobacco fortune, was a long-time Hillary fundraiser who joined the State Department as a “special advisor to the Secretary" and then "special advisor for Secretary initiatives."
Bagley and her husband had kicked in more than $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. At State, she was paid a $129,000 salary (the highest possible) and allowed to continue her other commercial activities.
Ann Gavaghan, a former member of Hillary's Senate staff, was also granted SGE special status. Gavaghan served as the chief of staff in the State Department's Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator.
One value of SGE status is that ethics rules are looser than those that apply to regular public employees. SGES can "work on a matter if you have a personal relationship with one of the parties."
They are also able to work for clients with matters before the office they work in. And they can raise money for political candidates (or entities like the Clinton Foundation) “if you do so only during non-duty hours and if you do not use a government resource."
We’re all harmed by this system and it’s unhealthy for ALL OF US.
As the Boston Globe put it, this kind of arrangement is “fraught with potential conflicts and abuses." Propublica, a nonprofit news organization, investigated the use of SGE status in the federal government and asked numerous government agencies to send them lists of SGES at their agencies. According to Propublica's Justine Elliott and Liz Day, many of them did. But the State Department balked. So Propublica filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The State Department responded after several months that assembling the list would require "extensive search," finally handing it over four months after that. State Department officials would not explain why they were so reluctant to share the information.
The other tool Hillary used to create pay-roll opportunities for Clinton friends and allies was the S-class designation. S-class positions were under the direct purview and financial control of the secretary of state and no one else. This allowed Hillary to exclude State Department bureaucrats,
Foreign Service officers, or civil servants from involvement or control over certain projects or activities, including everything from economic diplomacy to health care issues.
As reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes put it in a sympathetic portrait of her tenure, Hillary appointed "a cluster of special ambassadors, envoys and representatives and senior advisers who exercised tremendous power to circumvent the department bureaucracy."
Hillary further centralized control over the awarding of government grants, contracts, and consulting agreements by dramatically reducing the independence of USAID, which was part of the State Department apparatus.
Dubbed the "Foggy Bottom Smackdown" by some in Washington, Hillary effectively took away power from USAID administrators and in her Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review made clear that the agency's budget would remain under the State Department.
As the New Republic reported, not only were USAID programs further put under her control, but she populated the agency with loyalists who had little or no relevant experience.
The practice of appointing special status employees throughout the State Department bureaucracy effectively blurred the lines between American diplomatic initiatives and the interests of the Clintons and their friends.