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Huma Abedin stepped down from her post as deputy chief of staff at the State Department and Hillary Clinton\u2019s ever-present personal assistant on June 3, 2012. Only she didn\u2019t really leave.<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Instead, in a reverse twist on a program intended to bring talented outsiders into government, Abedin was immediately rehired as a \u201cspecial government employee.\u201d<\/strong><\/u> She also took paying jobs with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm with international clients that was co-founded by a foundation official who also was Bill Clinton\u2019s long-time personal aide.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Abedin\u2019s multitasking in the final eight months of Hillary Clinton\u2019s time as the top U.S. diplomat — and her role as intermediary for some of the same players before that — are drawing renewed scrutiny<\/strong><\/u> after a conservative watchdog group\u2019s release last week of a new batch of e-mails to and from Clinton aides. Abedin has become the personification of an election-year debate over whether the nonprofit foundation will create conflicts of interest if Clinton wins the White House.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nClinton was rated trustworthy by just 41 percent of likely voters in a Bloomberg Politics national poll<\/strong> conducted Aug. 5-8. More than half said that the Clinton Foundation\u2019s acceptance of foreign contributions while she was secretary of state bothers them \u201ca lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe Clinton Foundation for Hillary Clinton is kind of a walking conflict-of-interest problem,\u201d<\/strong> Meredith McGehee, policy director for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said in an interview. \u201cClearly this notion that it could continue to operate while she was secretary of state — it was a built-in problem. If you\u2019re really looking at what should happen if she\u2019s elected, neither her husband nor her daughter, certainly no relative, should have any connection with the foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
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When Clinton was awaiting confirmation as President Barack Obama\u2019s secretary of state in 2009, she wrote a letter to the State Department\u2019s chief ethics officer promising that she wouldn\u2019t \u201cparticipate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a direct and predictable effect upon this foundation, unless I first obtain a written waiver or qualify for a regulatory exemption.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
But that \u201cdid not preclude other State Department officials from having contact with the Clinton Foundation staff,\u201d<\/strong><\/u> just as they \u201care regularly in touch with a wide variety of outside individuals and organizations,\u201d department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters last week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThat\u2019s where Abedin came in.<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n
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Abedin\u2019s arrangement as a \u201cspecial government employee\u201d has been challenged since 2013 by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has questioned whether she was overpaid and wrote her that \u201cyou allegedly sent or received approximately 7,300 emails on your official Department of State address that involved Mr. Douglas Band,\u201d the Bill Clinton aide and Clinton Foundation official who co-founded Teneo.<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
In a 2013 letter to State Department officials, Abedin said she left her full-time post because \u201cthe birth of my son in December 2011 led me to decide to spend the bulk of my time in New York City where my family lived.\u201d She said she stayed on as an hourly employee working for \u201cthe Secretary of State in her personal capacity to help prepare for her transition from public service.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Abedin wrote that she provided \u201cstrategic advice\u201d to Teneo\u2019s management team but never did \u201cany work on Teneo\u2019s behalf before the department\u201d nor provided information from government sources to help its clients make investment decisions, as Republicans had suggested.<\/p>\n
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Abedin\u2019s arrangement was questioned in a 2013 civil lawsuit by Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group, which pressed for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. <\/strong>After Clinton\u2019s use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state became public, the group got the the case reopened and has been obtaining — and publicizing — a steady barrage of e-mails and deposition transcripts on the e-mail system and other topics.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Last week, Judicial Watch produced e-mails including a 2009 exchange in which Band wrote Abedin that it was \u201cimportant to take care of\u201d an individual, whose name was redacted. Abedin replied that \u201cpersonnel has been sending him options.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
In another 2009 exchange, Band asked Abedin and Cheryl Mills, Clinton\u2019s chief of staff, to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury in touch with a State Department “substance person” on Lebanon. The Chagoury Group co-founder has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a list of donors posted online.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The debate over the Clinton Foundation simply shows \u201cthe way Washington works,\u201d <\/strong><\/u>said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s instances like this that cause the public to have a negative view of how our government works, and it really gives people the impression that deals are done in back rooms and based on who you know rather than what you know,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Amey said in an interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhile Abedin hasn\u2019t said whether she\u2019d return to Washington and the White House to serve again in a Clinton administration, the Clintons have acknowledged that they would have to forge a new relationship with the foundation they started. But they haven\u2019t provided details.<\/strong><\/p>\n___
\nhttp:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2016-08-15\/special-government-employee-huma-abedin-smoking-gun-hillarys-pay-play-scheme<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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