Celebrate George Stephanopoulos on Feb. 10

George Stephanopoulos was born Feb. 10, 1961

It was 1992 when a confident, good looking communications director for the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton campaign walked into the Argus Leader newsroom in Sioux Falls, S.D. to meet with the Editorial Board. His name was George Stephanopoulos.

Executive Editor Jack Marsh invited everyone in the newsroom to sit in on the 7 a.m. meeting. Who could pass up an opportunity like that?

George Stephanopoulos made the case for his candidate that day before the editorial board. (I was not a part of the board at that time.) He was successful in making his case. The Editorial Board endorsed Bill Clinton for president.

Stephanopoulos currently is chief anchor and political correspondent on ABC News, and a co-anchor with Robin Roberts and Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, and host of This Week, ABC’s Sunday morning current events news program.

Before his career as a journalist, Stephanopoulos was an advisor to the Democratic Party. He rose to early prominence as a communications director for and subsequently became White House communications director. He was later senior advisor for policy and strategy, before departing in December 1996.

Stephanopoulos found himself in hot water. he donated $25,000 in 2012, 2013, and 2014, a total of $75,000, to the Clinton Foundation, but did not disclose the donations to ABC News, his employer, or to his viewers. Stephanopoulos failed to reveal the donations even on April 26, 2015, while interviewing Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, a book which alleges that donations to the Foundation influenced some of Hillary Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State.

After exposure of the donations by Politico on May 14, 2015, Stephanopoulos apologized and admitted he should have disclosed the donations to ABC News and its viewers. The story was broken by The Washington Free Beacon, which had questioned ABC News regarding the matter. The donations had been reported by the Clinton Foundation, which Stephanopoulos had considered sufficient, a reliance ABC News characterized as “an honest mistake.”

Based on Stephanopoulos’s donations to The Clinton Foundation charity and his behavior during prior interviews and presidential debates, Republican party leaders and candidates expressed their distrust, and called for him to be banned from moderating 2016 Presidential debates, due to bias and conflict of interest. He agreed to drop out as a moderator of the scheduled February 2016 Republican Presidential primary debate.

In the month prior to his revelation, Stephanopoulos told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that when money is given to the Clinton Foundation “everybody” knows there’s “a hope that that’s going to lead to something, and that’s what you have to be careful of.”