Politics

Secret Service Officer Says Clintons Thought They Had ‘Magic Royal Pot Of Money’

Reuters/Jim Young

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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In a new book, a former Secret Service uniformed officer accuses Bill and Hillary Clinton of acting as if they had a “magic royal pot” of taxpayer money at their disposal while living in the White House.

That’s according to an excerpt obtained by The Daily Caller of Gary Byrne’s soon-to-be released “Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate.”

“The Clintons believed that a magic royal pot of money somehow existed for their every whim,” Byrne writes, claiming he overheard shouted conversations about the costs of official events while stationed at the White House.

“Party rental companies refused future events until they were paid,” Byrne writes. “The discussions were plain embarrassing, but when I heard them I wasn’t eavesdropping. They were shouted in the hallway.”

According to Byrne, the Clintons threw official events at the White House to woo people without regard to the cost to taxpayers.

“As soon as Mr. Clinton became the president, Mrs. Clinton and her staff sought to repair the Clinton brand among groups they thought had been damaged during the campaign, scheduling galas, balls, and dinners,” Byrne writes. “They hosted open house tours day and night, especially around Christmas and for the military. What she and her staffers failed to realize was that the White House had a budget like any other government entity. Each shindig still had to be paid either from the Executive Residence budget or the Democratic Party’s purse.”

According to Byrne, “Early on, the staff kept promising payments but it was common knowledge that they had no idea of where they were coming from. But the buck kept getting passed because Mrs. Clinton didn’t want to hear ‘no,’ and no one wanted to be the bearer of bad news. Evergreen was spoiled.”

“Her doting, barely post-adolescent staffers resembled enabling, weak-willed parents,” writes Byrne. “She threw massive tantrums. As her husband’s term continued, those tantrums and her attitude toward us and various White House staff worsened.”

Byrne also claims knowledge of the Clintons being paranoid about being spied upon by former Bush administration officials.

“The Bush administration had upgraded the White House telecommunications system,” he writes. “It wasn’t easy. Imagine an elaborate phone system wired into a building built when the only common utility was plumbing. The Clinton staff upgraded it yet again.”

“The catch: The Clinton administration hadn’t anticipated that it had to actually pay for things, and the bill blindsided them,” he said. “We heard about this both from the West Wing staffers talking or yelling about it and from the AT&T technicians we escorted about the building.”

“These technicians further revealed to us that the new administration believed that Republicans in the Bush operation had tapped the White House system to listen in on them,” Byrne wrote.

He recalls an instance where alarms were going off at the vice president’s Residence at the Naval Observatory. When agents and officers arrived, “they found Vice President Al Gore standing on a chair, pulling an alarm out of the ceiling, looking for hidden cameras and listening devices.”

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