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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Plus: Moderate Democrat Feingold breaks ranks and basks in GOP love; Bush bowls over the press with good manners.
Jan 31, 2001 | The story of the Clintons' $190,027 worth of gifts just gets more interesting, although not the way most of the Beltway press was spinning it last week. Led by NBC's Andrea Mitchell, the press was busy bashing the Clintons for accepting an excessively large amount of gifts during 2000, with most of them going to furnish the Clintons' new million-dollar homes. Mitchell and others implied that most of the pricier gifts arrived after Hillary was elected New York's senator but before she was officially sworn in, thereby allowing her to bypass the Senate's ban on expensive gifts.
The truth is the Clintons' haul included many gifts received years ago, but which for various reasons were not accepted until last year. One such gift was a $22,000 piece from renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly. According to his assistant Janet Makela, the artist actually presented the sculpture to the Clintons eight years ago, and even though they claimed it as a gift last year the piece has not been moved to either of the Clintons' private homes. Rather, it will remain as part of the permanent White House Museum collection because the Clintons donated it. Makela explains that because the piece was essentially on loan from Chihuly, the Clintons had to officially accept it before donating it to the White House collection; otherwise the sculpture would have been returned to the artist. -- Eric Boehlert [1:35 a.m. PST, Jan. 31, 2001]
