We’re looking more deeply today into the case of Hassan Nemazee, the big-time Democratic fundraiser who’s now been charged with a massive Ponzi scheme, which he used to fund not only a lavish lifestyle but also extravagant giving to Democrats over most of the last decade.
Namezee wasn’t just any Democratic fundraiser. Not just any big Democratic fundraiser. We’re trying to confirm details because fundraiser titles in major campaigns can be pretty fluid and ambiguous. But he was either a top fundraiser of the top fundraiser (usually some permutation of ‘Finance Chairman’ for Kerry 2004, DSCC 2006 and Hillary for Prez 2008. Which is to say, what was arguably the top campaign or committee for that cycle.
Then back in the 1990s, he was a big time fundraiser for some extremely right wing Republicans: Helms, Brownback et al. So presumably, to put it charitably, ideology was not his driving motivation.
His turn appears to have come during the 1996 Clinton reelection — a somewhat revealing chronology in itself.
But the larger story here is the way that relatively unknown but very rich people rise quickly into the high-ticket political fundraising world, getting lots of access to very powerful politicians and often trading on their proximity to power to get richer still. We’re all familiar with the more traditional political giving in which the CEO of company X gives lots of money because his company has certain interests before Washington which he needs addressed or protected. But in a case like Nemazee it’s not immediately clear whether he had any particular interests before Congress or the White House that he wanted addressed. He just wanted to be in the mix. And now that we know that all or most of his wealth was based on a Ponzi scheme, there’s little doubt that his relationship with presidents and would-be presidents helped him keep the escalator of loans and investments rolling in.
