A Donor’s Gift Soon Followed Clinton’s Help

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: January 3, 2009
WASHINGTON — An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project.

Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

Mrs. Clinton also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

The bill with the tax-free bonds provision became law in October 2004, weeks before the donation, and the highway bill with the set-aside became law in August 2005, about nine months after the donation.

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His contribution is the only known situation so far in which an American donor gave a large sum to Mr. Clinton’s foundation while benefiting from his wife’s official actions. Mr. Reines said that Mrs. Clinton did not solicit the donation from Mr. Congel or discuss it with him or anyone on his behalf, and that she was unaware of its timing and size until last month.

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Although Mr. Congel has sometimes given money to Democrats, he is a major Republican campaign fund-raiser. In 2004, he was a “Bush Ranger,” gathering more than $200,000 in bundled contributions for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort.

In the most recent election cycle, he donated money to the Republican National Committee and to the Republican presidential primary campaigns of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Fred D. Thompson and Mitt Romney.

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According to the Federal Election Commission Web site, Mr. Congel gave $2,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in October 1999 and gave her political action committee a total of $12,500 from March 2002 to January 2005. He has continued to donate to Mrs. Clinton’s campaigns in the years since the two bills helping Destiny USA passed.

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Keith Ashdown, the chief investigator for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit group, said the money illustrated why donations to presidential foundations should be disclosed.