The Lincoln room became controversial in recent years when former President Bill Clinton offered the thrill of spending a night in it to celebrities, big contributors and many of his Arkansas friends, relatives and supporters. During his eight-year tenure, Clinton had more than 900 guests, including 72 of daughter Chelsea Clinton's chums, and the White House admitted that most of these overnight guests got to try out the Lincoln bed.
The unprecedented White House-for-cash stays were part of Bill Clinton’s brilliant strategy to raise $100 million for his reelection. The deep-pocketed guests included representatives of large corporations, foreign-government lobbyists, wealthy prominent attorneys investigated for wrongdoing and a socialite who orchestrated Bill’s last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.
“There are two words we have to say in this conversation: Lincoln bedroom,” Bloomberg Politics reporter Lisa Lerer said. “This plays exactly into the existing narrative that you were talking about of the Clintons, that they just want to collect cash. It’s damaging..."
Democrat, Election, Character, Financial, Greed, Corruption
February 26, 1997: President Clinton two years ago personally approved a plan under which the Democratic Party rewarded some top donors with meals, coffees, golf outings and morning jogs with him and with overnight stays in the Lincoln bedroom, to "energize" them for the coming presidential campaign.
"Ready to start overnights right away," Clinton recommended in a handwritten note for his staff that he attached to a memorandum sent to him by Terence McAuliffe, then the Democratic finance chairman. The memorandum outlined ways to encourage the party's biggest fund-raisers to prepare for the 1996 re-election effort.
Democrat, Election, Character, Financial, Greed, Corruption
The agency’s campaign finance task force issued a scathing 94-page report saying that Bill Clinton’s desperate need to raise enormous sums of money led to a situation where abuse was rampant and indeed the norm. A separate congressional inquiry revealed that the big Clinton donors were not only given overnight accommodations in the White House, they were also ushered into the Oval office for coffees, lunches and other meetings with the president and First Lady and taken for rides on Air Force One.
Democrat, Election, Character, Financial, Greed, Corruption
WHO: Bill Clinton
WHEN: 1994-95
HOW MUCH: $50,000-$100,000
WHAT YOU GET: An overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom or dinner with Clinton at the White House
MONEY QUOTE: "The White House is like a subway: You have to put in coins to open the gates"—Johnny Chung, a Taiwanese-born businessman and major Democratic donor in the 1990s.
Democrat, Election, Character, Financial, Greed, Corruption
President Clinton himself wrote back, ‘Yes, pursue all three, and promptly, and get other names at 100,000 or more, 50,000 or more.’ The President added, ‘ready to start overnights right away.’ And in a 1996 memo, Clinton campaign Chairman Peter Knight tells the White House that Democrats expect to raise $350,000 from just one White House coffee with the President.
Democrat, Election, Character, Financial, Greed, Corruption
The Center for Public Integrity, that's a Washington campaign finance watchdog group, has analyzed that overnight guest list, and it estimates that the guests over the years donated at least $4 million to Bill Clinton's races for the White House and also to the Democratic National Committee.