With the brouhaha over Donna Brazile's self-serving revelations that Hillary effectively bought the DNC after entering into an agreement that allowed the Clinton campaign an unprecedented amount of control over the DNC during the primaries, a lot of other facts about the Dem establishment supporting Clinton long before August 2015 is not being mentioned. So let's review the full timeline shall we, beginning in 2013.

Hillary Handed Keys to Obama SuperPac

The primary Super Pac (Political Action Committee) that raised millions of dollars for the 2012 Obama re-election campaign was Priorities USA Action. After 2012, Obama didn't need it anymore, but someone else in his administration with ambitions on running in 2016 did: Hillary Clinton. In August 2013, the Washington Post published the following story showing that this major Democratic fundraising vehicle was being handed over to Hillary for her run in 2016.

Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama super PAC that led attacks against Republican Mitt Romney, is quietly positioning itself to ­become the main independent group funding a media campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, according to Democrats familiar with the plans. [...]

The emergence of Priorities as a pro-Clinton ally introduces a heavyweight player into the constellation of super PACs and other independent groups already focused on the 2016 race. The move also shows how the political forces that helped reelect President Obama are increasingly gathering around Clinton and could make it more difficult for Vice President Biden or other Democratic hopefuls to compete for the nomination if she runs.

And that's exactly what happened. You might have been surprised to see Obama doing this favor for Hillary long before she officially announced she was running for President, but remember that back in 2008, Obama not only agreed to make her Secretary of State, he also asked his donors to pay off her 2008 campaign debt. In short this was always the plan. Obama needed Clinton's support in 2008. In exchange, she ended up with the support of his biggest donors and the SuperPac that took their money in 2015 and 2016 on her behalf.

Clinton Loyalist Debbie Wasserman Schultz Remains DNC Chair Despite Failure

But Clinton needed more than just big donors and a SuperPac with a record of getting them to pony up for Obama. She needed to ensure that the DNC was loyal to her and not to any other possible establishment candidate. She needed to discourage any other viable candidate from running against her, as that might lead to defections among the Obama donors.

Thus, Obama allowed Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Clinton's former 2008 campaign manager to remain as head of the DNC, despite her miserable failure at electing Democrats in the 2014 mid-term elections.

Ultimately, that decision paid off for Clinton as this DNC Memo, dated May, 26, 2015, makes clear:

Note that HRC (referring to Clinton) is named twice in the document as if she were the only candidate running for the Democratic nomination. Yet Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination in late April of 2015, only two weeks after Clinton's announcement. And it was well known by mid-May that Martin O'Malley was set to run as well, as this Politico story demonstrates. Nonetheless the DNC was already on board with Hillary. And then Clinton did one more thing to ensure that the DNC would remain under her control.

The Secret August 2015 Agreement Between Hillary and DNC

Before the Donna Brazile statement this week, everyone knew that the Hillary campaign and the DNC had entered into a joint fundraising agreement, ostensibly to help raise money for the DNC and state parties. People who had been paying attention also knew that the "Hillary Victory Fund" was used to launder money raised for the state parties and the DNC and funnel most of it back to Hillary's campaign during the primary, a clear ethical transgression if not technically illegal under campaign finance law.

Clinton fundraising leaves little for state parties

The Democratic front-runner says she's raising big checks to help state committees, but they've gotten to keep only 1 percent of the $60 million raised.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL and ISAAC ARNSDORF

05/02/2016 05:21 AM EDT

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen."

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

As sleazy as this money laundering scheme was, what we didn't know was that Clinton already had the DNC under her thumb because of a secret agreement, which is detailed in a Memorandum, dated August 26, 2015, between the DNC, Hillary's campaign (Hillary for America or "HFA") and the Hillary Victory Fund. That agreement gave Clinton's campaign unprecedented control over the DNC during the primary season, including the right to approve staffing, budgeting and other "strategic decisions." The agreement also gave Clinton the right to review (and thus approve or disapprove) any communications about any candidate, whether herself or her opponents, during the primary.

I highlighted that last part because many Clinton diehards have been going around claiming this agreement only related to the general election, and was identical to Bernie's fundraising agreement with the DNC. Both claims are patently false. Sanders' campaign has released a copy of its agreement with the DNC, and it doesn't include any of the terms in the secret Clinton/DNC Memorandum of August 2015.

As for the provisions regarding the control granted to Clinton over the DNC during the primary in exchange for funding the DNC, here they are:

MEMORANDUM
TO: Amy Dacey
FROM: Robby Mook
DATE: August 26, 2015
RE: Joint Fundraising Agreement

This Memorandum is intended to memorialize our agreement regarding the creation and operation of Hillary Victory Fund (Victory Fund), a joint fundraising committee of Hillary for America (HFA) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

HFA is prepared to raise and invest funds into the DNC via the Victory. In return for this financial support, HFA requires the appropriate influence over the financial, strategic, and operational use of these JFA-raised funds. [...]

The remaining pertinent provisions are set forth in screen caps:

Some have tried to claim that this agreement only related to the "general election" after Clinton became the nominee. However, besides the fact that there was no need for a "general election" agreement in August 2015 as no nominee had yet been chosen, a straightforward reading of the document shows that such claims are misleading at best. Let me cut through the legalese for you. Here are the rights Clinton was granted by the DNC in exchange for being funded each month by Clinton through monies collected by the Hillary Victory Fund:

(1) Fill any staff appointments or vacancies from a list of Clinton approved candidates, beginning with the appointment of the DNC's Communications Director by September 11, 2015. In other words, no one who wasn't loyal to Clinton could be appointed to work for the DNC, and this condition was in effect during the primaries.

(2) Clinton's campaign had the right to review in advance any DNC communications about any candidate running in the primary, including herself, Sanders, Chaffee and O'Malley. So, Clinton's approved DNC Communications Director also had to run by Clinton's campaign anything the DNC wanted to send out regarding Clinton or any other candidate for the nomination.

(3) Clinton representatives were granted "joint authority" over "strategic decisions" regarding the DNC's staffing, budget, expenditures, etc. This was no doubt the provision that was used to justify laundering the contributions given to the Hillary Victory Fund for the benefit of the DNC and the state parties back to the Clinton campaign itself.

(4) The DNC was required to share "complete and seamless access to all research work product" and analytical tools it developed once the DNC received the first payment from Clinton. Let me make that clear: this applied not after Clinton won the nomination but as soon as that first payment was received by the DNC on October 1st. No other candidate during the primaries had access to that information or those analytical tools. Only Clinton.

(5) The agreement could be terminated by either the DNC or Clinton on March 31, 2016, about four months before the July convention. Yet Clinton was obligated to make monthly payments of no less than $1.2 Million to the DNC (and generally more - that was the minimum owed) starting October 1, 2015, payment which were to continue until the agreement ended. In addition, Clinton agreed to pay the DNC $250,000 before March 31, 2016 in exchange for a file licensing agreement.

Regarding point (5) above, Clinton's payment obligation represented a lot of money to pay to the DNC over 10 months before the DNC convention chose the Democratic nominee for the general election. It's certainly a lot to pay for an agreement that the DNC had the right to walk away from after only six months. And it makes no sense if it only gave Clinton power over the DNC during the general. If nothing else, Clinton's funding of the DNC during the primary in exchange for various "conditions" that benefited here immensely shows that the real purpose of the "fundraising agreement" was to allow Clinton to control the actions of the DNC prior to the end of the primaries.

Control over the DNC allowed Clinton to determine how the money raised by the Hillary Victory Fund would be allocated during the primary season. And, as we saw, Clinton made sure that 99 percent of the money raised went to her campaign or to the DNC, which she controlled, during the height of the primary season when the nomination was still in play.

In May 2016, Politico analyzed Federal Election Commission filings and found that the state parties retained less than one percent of the $61 million raised by the Hillary Victory Fund. While $3.8 million had been transferred to the state parties, 88 percent of it was transferred back to the national committee, usually within 1-2 days, by the Clinton staff member who led the Fund. This let the national committee intake money from individuals beyond the limit they could receive from individuals directly. The campaign received $15.4 million of the Fund and the national committee received $5.7 million. Most of the $23.3 million expended directly by the Hillary Victory Fund has gone to activities that directly benefit the Clinton campaign, such as $2.8 million for staffing costs and $8.6 million in web advertising. These ads were run by the same company used by the Clinton campaign. Politico reported state party officials as being unhappy about the "one-sided" arrangement in which the states parties were used to raise money for the Clinton campaign while its supporters exaggerate the good done for the state parties. The Clinton campaign and national committee said that all state branches of the party would benefit from the improved national voter data.

Indeed, if you check Open Secrets, during the entire time The Hillary Victory Fund (HVF) was in existence (during both the primaries and the general election campaign), the Clinton campaign was the largest beneficiary of the millions the HVF raised. The Clinton campaign received $158.2 Million from the HVF according to FEC filings reviewed by Open Secrets.

Next in line was the DNC Services Corporation and the DNC Travel Offset Account, DNC affiliates who collectively received $107,579,924.

Lastly, thirty-eight state Democratic parties collectively received $112,361,262 or roughly $3 million apiece, most of which they likely received after the primaries were over.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC (essentially another arm of the Clinton campaign) collectively received $265,779,924in total from the HVF, or about 2.4 times more than the total amount that all 38 state parties received.

The HVF also spent $96.6 Million for fundraising costs ($47.1 Million), online ads ($41.1 million) and $8.5 Million on salaries and administrative costs.

In the end, the Hillary Victory Fund proved to be a great deal for Clinton, her campaign, the DNC and their numerous consultants, advisors and vendors. The state parties who signed the agreement with HVF, and who were supposed to be its primary beneficiaries, however, did far less well.

Effect of Secret Agreement During Primaries

Clinton staffers clearly believed that this agreement gave the Clinton campaign extraordinary power over the DNC, as was revealed in a December 17, 2015 attachment sent by email from Heather Stone to John Podesta. The attachment labeled "DNC Leadership" openly discusses the Clinton campaign's options regarding the replacement of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC Chair prior to winning the nomination:

The following memo outlines our recommendations regarding DNC leadership and some options for discussion for the path forward.

March Through July
Until the convention, we recommend that we keep Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the Chair of the party, but bring on a Chief of Staff to drive the day-to-day work.

Whether Debbie Wasserman Schultz should remain as the Chair of the DNC is an open question for discussion. However, we do not recommend any change in the Chair before the convention.

As soon as we become the presumptive nominee, we will need someone senior at the DNC to manage operations on a daily basis. We recommend installing someone as Chief of Staff, who will oversee the budget, fundraising, staffing and general election operations. Amy Dacey should continue to manage party affairs.

This is mid-December 2015, well before Iowa's caucus and a Clinton staffer reporting to John Podesta was already making recommendations regarding changes to the DNC leadership, including whether to fire Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC Chair prior to the convention! It also shows that they believed they had the authority to appoint a Chief of Staff for the DNC on their own authority. I don't think they would have created this document containing such statements unless they were not certain of Clinton's complete control over the DNC as of December 2015, i.e., before the beginning of the primaries, and not just some promise of authority to be granted Clinton after she secured the nomination.

Indeed, this is how the December 17, 2015 "DNC Leadership" memo sent to Podesta begins:

Through a series of conversations and negotiations, we have reached an understanding with the DNC that allows us to conduct a series of special projects, including GOP opposition research, communications, and discrete data and analytics projects.

That statement uses the same language found in the August 26, 2015 Memorandum on the Joint Fundraising Agreement between the DNC, the Clinton campaign ("Hillary for America" or HFA) and the Hillary Victory Fund. No other campaign enjoyed such access, or exercised such power over the inner workings of the DNC. According to its bylaws, the DNC is supposed to remain neutral and impartial during the primaries leading up to the convention, but this agreement shattered that veneer of impartiality. And clearly Clinton's power over the DNC, as a result of her control over its finances, was used to benefit only one candidate: Hillary Clinton.

[This is the end of Part 1 of this essay. Examples where the DNC violated its impartiality and operated to rig the primaries in Clinton's favor, as well as a discussion of President Obama's role in insuring that Clinton would be the nominee will be presented in Part 2.]