Bill Clinton and his right-hand Band. Photo: Washington Post.com
Remember Doug Band, the mysterious “counselor” of Bill Clinton who introduced him to Raffaello Follieri and hassled restaurateur Nino Selimaj into taking a photo of Chelsea Clinton off the wall of Osso Buco because she was, in his estimation, “not a public figure”? The Washington Post spotted him in the background of that video of Bill Clinton dressing down CNN’s Jessica Yellin, and wondered what we wondered some months ago: Who is this guy? Band is the spotlight these days, the paper notes, a fact which he can’t be too happy about, not least because the spotlight is apparently shining directly on what the Post describes as his “prematurely thinning hair.”
There’s not a lot in the Post story, which Band doesn’t participate in, that we don’t already know: He was a White House intern before becoming the president’s aide and official mobile-phone carrier; he is married to “handbag designer” Lily Rafii, he’s kind of a jerk, or “gruff” as a source tells the Post, and some say this attitude has “enabled” Clinton’s recent jerkiness. (Also the Post misses out on some juicy bits, like his association with Jeffrey Epstein and an organization called the “White Boys” that we are dying to know about.)
But there are a few nuggets, chief among them the fact that Band apparently dated Naomi Campbell (!?); that he once escorted Monica Lewinsky to a White House ball; and that his brother Roger, a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania, sometimes acts as the traveling physician for Clinton.
Incidentally, Roger himself was also sort of unclear on who Band was. “I had no idea what a big deal his job was,” he told the Post. “When he took us into the Oval Office, I was like, ‘Oh, cool, what, did some guy let you in? Then I saw his name on the speed dial.’”
Bill Clinton’s Aide, Now In the Story [WP]
Earlier: A Field Guide to Bill Clinton’s Fonzworth Bentley
