Bill Clinton has used funds from the 1958 Former Presidents Act more liberally than his living former presidential peers, spending taxpayer money to subsidize the income and provide federal benefits for his office staff, some of whom also worked at various times at the Clinton Foundation and a consulting firm run by Clinton loyalists, and to pay for IT equipment, including at least one server briefly housed at the Foundation and used for Clinton's correspondence by both his office and Foundation staff, Politico reports. Those on Clinton's former-presidents federal payroll at some point include Justin Cooper, the aide who set up Hillary Clinton's private server, and Doug Band, a Clinton Foundation figure in frequent contact with Hillary Clinton's aides at the State Department.
Politico, which pieced together its report from General Services Administration records and tax filings, says none of this is illegal, but "it does offer fresh evidence of how the Clintons blurred the line" between Bill Clinton's official office, the family charity, and his wife's tenure at the State Department. Every former president gets $96,000 a year to spend on staff, and Bill Clinton's ex-president office typically had 10 staff; the main benefit of the $9,600 from the GSA, augmented by Clinton, appears to be that it entitles the staffer to receive federal benefits. Clinton "wears several hats — among them being former president of the United States and the founder of the Clinton Foundation," a Clinton aide tells Politico. "His staffing reflects those roles."
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