More White House Fund-Raisers Discovered Events Included Receptions, Meals

The Clinton White House held at least 58 receptions, meals and other events for Democratic Party donors and political supporters over the past four years - in addition to the 103 coffees previously disclosed.

“It’s fair to say these additional functions at the White House were for the purpose of encouraging support for the president’s campaign, including financial support,” White House special counsel Lanny Davis said Saturday.

White House officials have for weeks refused reporters’ requests to make public the guest lists for other political events held there, as well as lists of those who stayed at Camp David or were invited to fly on Air Force One with the president.

Clinton’s use of the perquisites of the presidency as fund-raising tools has been controversial since disclosures that major donors were invited to coffees or to spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom. Reviews of those lists show that guests at the coffees, including a convicted felon and a Chinese businessman who heads an arms-trading company, donated $27 million to the DNC. Overnight guests at the White House donated at least $6 million.

The 58 White House events included more than 30 receptions, a $3,838 DNC tea in 1994 and a $2,294 Clinton-Gore campaign luncheon last May. The events were itemized along with the coffees in a list of “reimbursable political events” released last week at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing.

White House officials have said such events were not planned with the intention of raising specific amounts of money for the reelection effort. But Harold Ickes, the former White House deputy chief of staff who directed the re-election campaign, recently turned over a large number of documents to Congress that show figures for expected and actual donations for nearly every White House coffee, a source said.