The heavyset 60-year-old man who walked with a cane seemed an unlikely speaker at the glamorous launch party for a cosmetics company held in Santa Monica, Calif., in March.
But Tony Rodham appeared at ease among the special guests and well-heeled investors, offering them encouragement as well as an invitation.
“If there’s anything I can ever do for any of you, let me know,” Mr. Rodham said. “I’ll be more than happy to do it.”
A promotional video of the party that the cosmetics company later released identified the speaker as “the youngest brother of former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton,” a relationship that has been Mr. Rodham’s calling card since the days of the Clinton White House.On and off for two decades, the affable Mr. Rodham has tried to use his connections with his sister and his brother-in-law, former President Bill Clinton, to further a business career that has seen more failures than successes. The connections to the Clintons have given Mr. Rodham, a self-described “facilitator,” a unique appeal and a range of opportunities, like addressing Chinese investor conferences and joining an advisory board of a company seeking permission to mine for gold in Haiti.But his business dealings have often invited public scrutiny and uncomfortable questions for the Clintons as Mr. Rodham has cycled through a variety of ventures, leveraging his ties to them and sometimes directly seeking their help.
When Mr. Clinton worked as a co-chairman of Haiti’s earthquake recovery commission, Mr. Rodham and his partners sought a $22 million deal to rebuild homes in the country. In court proceedings three years ago in an unrelated lawsuit, Mr. Rodham explained how “a guy in Haiti” had “donated” 10,000 acres of land to him and described how he had leaned on Mr. Clinton to get the rebuilding project funded amid bureaucratic delays.
“I deal through the Clinton Foundation. That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials,” Mr. Rodham said, according to a transcript of his testimony. “I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it.
“And he keeps telling me, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Well, tomorrow hasn’t come yet.”
Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project never did happen. The Clinton Foundation said in a statement that it was not aware of Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project and had no involvement in it. Mr. Clinton’s office said he had not been involved in any of Mr. Rodham’s pursuits in Haiti.
But Mr. Rodham was able to prevail on the former president for help in other ways.
When Mr. Rodham was short on cash in 2010, Mr. Clinton helped get him a job for $72,000 a year raising investments in GreenTech Automotive, anelectric car company then owned by Terry McAuliffe, an old friend of Mr. Clinton’s and now the governor of Virginia.
“I was complaining to my brother-in-law I didn’t have any money. And he asked McAuliffe to give me a job,” Mr. Rodham said during the court proceedings, which were the result of a lawsuit over unpaid legal bills filed by his lawyer in a child support case.
A brother down on his luck seeking help from more successful siblings is a familiar story, and presidents and their families have hardly been immune from that sometimes uncomfortable situation. For the Clintons, Tony Rodham has not been the only source of embarrassment.
Mrs. Clinton’s other brother, Hugh Rodham, stumbled through an unsuccessful campaign for the Senate in Florida during Mr. Clinton’s first term. Roger Clinton, the former president’s brother, served a year in federal prison on a cocaine distribution charge. And all three were involved in lobbying Mr. Clinton for pardons for their associates as he left office, prompting a congressional inquiry.
“They’re all colorful,” Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton aide who later became mayor of Chicago, said in an interview in 2001. “They’re all living large.”
As Mrs. Clinton began her 2016 campaign for the presidency, Hugh Rodham and Roger Clinton had faded from public view, but Tony Rodham emerged as a controversial figure. A government investigation in March found that GreenTech, which sought green cards for its Chinese investors through an American government program, had received special treatment in the handling of its visa applications. The report described instances when Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Rodham contacted an official from the Department of Homeland Security to complain about the pace of the visa process.
Mr. Rodham’s unsuccessful pursuit of housing contracts in Haiti, which has not previously been reported, raised new questions.
As Mrs. Clinton campaigns, she speaks fondly of her brothers. At a stop in Iowa, she recalled them working together at her father’s drapery business. Her official campaign biography prominently mentions them.
“She loves her family more than anything,” said Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. “Her brothers have always been there for her, and she will always be there for them. Each, though, have their own lives, their own jobs, their own ups and downs.”
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