SOL: IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK, QUACKS LIKE A DUCK, AND LAYS EGGS LIKE A DUCK...
THEN IT MUST BE A JACKASS!
Emails reveal how foundation donors got access to Clinton and her close aides at State Dept.
A
sports executive who was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation and
whose firm paid Bill Clinton millions of dollars in consulting fees
wanted help getting a visa for a British soccer player with a criminal
past.
The
crown prince of Bahrain, whose government gave more than $50,000 to the
Clintons’ charity and who participated in its glitzy annual conference,
wanted a last-minute meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
U2
rocker and philanthropist Bono, also a regular at foundation events,
wanted high-level help broadcasting a live link to the International
Space Station during concerts.
In
each case, according to emails released Monday from Hillary Clinton’s
time as secretary of state, the requests were directed to Clinton’s
deputy chief of staff and confidante, Huma Abedin, who engaged with
other top aides and sometimes Clinton herself about how to respond.
The
emails show that, in these and similar cases, the donors did not always
get what they wanted, particularly when they sought anything more than a
meeting.
Huma
Abedin has worked her way up from White House intern to Hillary
Clinton’s right-hand woman. Here’s a look at her history with the
Clintons, her marriage to Anthony Weiner and her current role on the
Clinton campaign. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
But
the exchanges, among 725 pages of correspondence from Abedin disclosed
as part of a lawsuit by the conservative group Judicial Watch,
illustrate the way the Clintons’ international network of friends and
donors was able to get access to Hillary Clinton and her inner circle
during her tenure running the State Department.
The
release of the correspondence follows previous disclosures of internal
emails showing a similar pattern of access for foundation contributors,
and it comes as Republicans allege that Clinton, the Democratic
presidential nominee, used her perch in the Obama administration to
trade favors for donations. Clinton and the foundation have vigorously
denied the charge.
The
disclosures also cast new doubts on Clinton’s past claim that she
turned over all her work-related email from her private server to the
State Department for eventual release to the public.
Judicial
Watch said Monday’s release from Abedin’s inbox included 20 previously
undisclosed exchanges with Clinton that were not included in the
approximately 55,000 pages of correspondence the former secretary gave
to State. Also Monday, the State Department said the FBI had turned over
nearly 15,000 emails and other documents that investigators discovered
during a probe of Clinton’s email setup that she had not previously
returned to State.
Clinton
has said about 30,000 personal emails were deleted from the server. The
FBI batch includes emails and attachments that were sent directly to or
from Clinton, or that were part of email chains.
FBI
Director James B. Comey has said there is no evidence that emails were
purposefully deleted with an intent to conceal them, and a State
Department spokesman said Monday that some of the records included
emails that were purely personal.
The biggest moments from FBI Director James Comey's testimony
Play Video6:56
FBI
Director James Comey testified on July 7 at a U.S. House of
Representatives hearing on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton's decision to use a personal email server while serving
as Secretary of State. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
It
is not clear when the documents discovered by the FBI will become
public, but attorneys for the State Department and Judicial Watch are
negotiating a release that is likely to begin before the election and
continue long after.
Josh
Schwerin, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said in a statement Monday that
Judicial Watch is a “right-wing organization that has been going after
the Clintons since the 1990s” and that the group is “distorting facts to
make utterly false attacks.”
“No
matter how this group tries to mischaracterize these documents, the
fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as Secretary of
State because of donations to the Clinton Foundation,” he said.
State
Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Monday that there is “no
clear sign” donors received access for their contributions.
The
emails released Monday showed how requests from donors would often come
through Doug Band, a longtime Bill Clinton aide who helped create the
foundation, with Abedin as a primary point of contact. Band declined to
comment on the newly released emails, and attorneys for Abedin did not
respond to a request for comment.
There
is no indication from the emails that Abedin intervened on behalf of
Casey Wasserman, an L.A. sports executive who in 2009 asked Band for
help getting a visa for a British soccer star trying to visit Las Vegas.
Band indicated that the office of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) had
already declined to help, given the player’s criminal record. A Boxer
spokesman described the request to her office as “routine” but one with
that Boxer did not assist, “given the facts of the case.”
“Makes
me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask,” Abedin wrote to Band in May
2009 after he forwarded to her an email from Wasserman.
Band responded: “then dont.”
Wasserman’s
charitable foundation has given the Clinton Foundation between $5
million and $10 million. In 2009 and 2010, his investment company paid
Bill Clinton $3.13 million in consulting fees.
A spokeswoman for Wasserman said the businessman never contacted Bill Clinton on the matter and the visa was never granted.
Band
and Abedin also responded dismissively when asked if they had any ideas
on how to help Bono get his space station transmission: “No clue,” they
each responded in turn.
The
appeal appears to have had more success in the case of Salman bin Hamad
al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain. In June 2009, Band emailed
Abedin that the prince would be in Washington for two days and was
seeking a meeting with Hillary Clinton. “Good friend of ours,” he added.
Abedin
responded that the prince had already requested a meeting “through
normal channels” but that Clinton had been hesitant to commit. Two days
later, Abedin followed up with Band to let him know that a meeting with
the prince had been set. “If u see him, let him know. We have reached
out thru official channels,” she wrote to Band.
Bahrain has a spotty human rights record but full relations with the U.S. government.
In
a statement, the court of the crown prince said his participation at a
2005 foundation event “happened years before and was wholly unrelated to
any meeting with Secretary Clinton,” adding that the prince is deputy
head of state of an American ally and so he often meets with U.S.
officials.
The
new disclosures come as the Clinton Foundation and its international
network of powerful donors have returned to the forefront of the
presidential campaign.
On
Monday, Bill Clinton sent an email to foundation staff and supporters
outlining new steps and offering a defense of the foundation’s
accomplishments. He wrote that the foundation would stop accepting
corporate and foreign donations if Hillary Clinton was elected and that
he would step down from the charity’s board, along with the board of a
related Boston-based health organization. While he said his role would
change, “the work itself should continue because so many people are
committed to it and so many more are relying on it.”
The
announcements did little to quell Republican attacks. The GOP nominee,
Donald Trump, on Monday called for the foundation to be shut down
altogether, describing the charity as “the most corrupt enterprise in
political history.”
The
newly released emails underscored the central role played by Abedin, a
top adviser to Clinton’s campaign who has been working for her since
Clinton’s time as first lady.
When
S. Daniel Abraham, a major Democratic donor who had also given to the
foundation, was visiting Washington in May 2009 and wanted to see
Clinton, the emails showed that he placed a call to Abedin. “Do u want
me to try and fit him in tomorrow?” Abedin emailed Clinton, who appeared
to indicate in her response that she was willing to make time.
Abraham
said in an interview Monday that he talked with Clinton about the
Middle East and that his status as a donor had nothing to do with his
ability to secure time with the secretary.
“It
was about the issue that I have worked hard on for many, many years,
Israeli-Palestinian peace,” he said. “I have been friendly with the
Clintons since their White House days. As far as I am concerned it was
all good. She never asked me for anything.”
Longtime
Clinton friend and fundraiser Maureen White wrote Abedin in July 2009,
saying that she would be in Washington three days later. “Would she have
any time to spare?” White wrote.
“Yes I’ll make it work,” Abedin responded.
White
went on to serve in the State Department under Clinton. White said she
and her husband, Steven Rattner, gave $31,000 to the foundation before
2009 and $25,000 to the foundation in 2012. White said that she did not
remember the specific exchange but that she has met often with Clinton
as a longtime supporter and has worked on refugee and humanitarian
issues in several capacities in and out of government.
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“Usually when I told Huma I wanted to meet with Hillary Clinton, Huma made it happen,” White said.
In
another email exchange, Democratic donor and activist Joyce Aboussie of
St. Louis wrote to Abedin requesting a meeting between Clinton and a
top executive of St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, one of the world’s
largest coal producers.
“Huma,
I need your help now to intervene please,” Aboussie wrote in June 2009.
“We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now
for nearly six months. This is, by the way, my first request.”
Abedin
responded: “We are working on it and I hope we can make something work
. . . we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here.”
It
is not clear whether the meeting took place. Neither Peabody officials
nor Aboussie, who donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton
Foundation, responded to requests for comment.
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