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| Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton |
Source for the following: Judicial Watch
Crown Prince of Bahrain Forced to Go Through Foundation to See Clinton, after Pledging $32 Million to Clinton Global Initiative
Hollywood Executive Casey
Wasserman, Slimfast Mogul Daniel Abraham, Controversial Appointee Rajiv
Fernando also among Clinton Foundation Donors Granted Special Favors from
Clinton State Department
(Washington, DC) –
Judicial Watch today released 725 pages
of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email
exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided
influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the
secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to
donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas
Band.
The new documents
included 20 Hillary
Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State
Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not
part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State
Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by
Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned
over to the State Department.
The Abedin emails reveal
that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton
Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of
state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct
access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to
the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive
Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure
at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to
Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was
taking care of “Clinton family
matters.”
Included among the
Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of
Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to
go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that
when she went through “normal channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet.
After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight
hours. According to the Clinton
Foundation website, in 2005, Salman committed to establishing
the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton
Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The
Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and
$100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also
gave an additional
$25,000 to $50,000.
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Tue Jun 23 1:29:42 2009
Subject: Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday
Asking to see her
Good friend of ours
To: Doug Band
Sent: Tue Jun 23 4:12:46 2009
Subject: Re:
He asked to see hrc thurs and fri thru normal channels. I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny…
Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:35:15 AM
To: Doug Band
Subject: Offering Bahrain cp 10 tomorrow for meeting woith [sic] hrc
If u see him, let him know We have reached out thru official channels
Also included among the Abedin-Band
emails is an exchange in which Band urged Abedin to get the
Clinton State Department to intervene in order to obtain a visa for members of
the Wolverhampton (UK) Football Club, one of whose members was apparently
having difficulty because of a “criminal charge.” Band was acting at the behest
of Casey Wasserman, a millionaire Hollywood sports entertainment executive and
President of the Wasserman Foundation. Wasserman has donated between $5 million and
$10 million to the Clinton Foundation through the Wasserman
Foundation.
From: Tim Hoy [VP
Wasserman Media Group]
Date: Tue. 5 May
2009 10:45:55 – 0700To: Casey Wasserman
Subject: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Casey: Paul Martin’s [popular English footballer] client [Redacted] needs to get an expedited appointment at the US Embassy in London this week and we have hit some road blocks. I am writing to ask for your help.
The Wolverhampton FC is coming to Las Vegas this Thursday for a “celebration break.” [Redacted] so he cannot get a visa to the US without first being “interviewed” in the visa section of the US Embassy in London …
I contacted Senator Boxer’s office in SF for help … They balked at the criminal charge and said they “couldn’t help.”
I’m now trying to get help from Sherrod Brown’s office but that’s not going well either. So do you have any ideas/contacts that could contact the US Embassy in London and ask that they see [Redacted] tomorrow?
To: Doug Band; Trista Schroeder [Wasserman Media Group executive]
Sent: Tue May 05 2:23:50 2009 [PT]
Subject: FW [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Can you help with the below [Hoy email], or maybe Huma??? I am copying trista as I am on the plane in case I lose connection … thx.
Sent: Tue May 05 7:08:21 2009 [ET]
To: Casey Wasserman; Trista Schroeder
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Will email her.
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Tue May 5 7:26:49 2009
Subject: Fw: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
[As per subject line, Band apparently forwarded Abedin material sent to him by Casey.]
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 7:39:38 PM
To: Doug Band
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
I doubt we can do anything but maybe we can help with an interview. I’ll ask.
From: Huma Abedin
To: Doug BandSent: Tue May 05 5:50:09 2009
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
I got this now, makes me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask.
From: Doug Band
To: Huma AbedinSent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 7:43:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Redacted] Wolverhampton FC/visa matter
Then don’t
The Abedin emails also reveal that Slimfast tycoon S. Daniel Abraham was granted almost immediate access to then-Secretary of State Clinton, with Abedin serving as the facilitator. According to the Clinton Foundation website, Abraham, like the Wasserman Foundation, has given between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. The emails indicate that Abraham was granted almost immediate access to Clinton upon request:
To: H
Sent: Mon May 04 4:40:34 2009
Subject: Danny
Danny abraham called this morning. He is in dc today and tomorrow and asked for 15 min with you. Do u want me to try and fit him in tomorrow?
From: H
To Huma AbedinSent: Mon May 04 5:14:00 2009
Subject: Re: Danny
Will the plane wait if I can’t get there before 7-8?
From: Huma Abedin
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 5:15:30 PM
Subject: Re: Danny
Yes of course
Additional Abedin emails in which the top Clinton aide intervenes with the State Department on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors include the following:
On Friday, June 26, 2009, Clinton confidant Kevin O’Keefe wrote to Clinton saying that “Kevin Conlon is trying to set up a meeting with you and a major client.” Clinton wrote to Abedin, “Can you help deliver these for Kevin?” Abedin responded, “I’ll look into it asap” Kevin O’Keefe donated between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Kevin Conlon is a Clinton presidential campaign “Hillblazer” who has raised more than $100,000 for the candidate.
On Tuesday, June 16, 2009, Ben Ringel wrote to Abedin, “I’m on shuttle w Avigdor Liberman. I called u back yesterday. I want to stop by to see hrc tonite for 10 mins.” Ringel donated between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
On Monday, July 6, 2009, Maureen White wrote to Abedin, “I am going to be in DC on Thursday. Would she have any time to spare?” Abedin responded, “Yes I’ll make it work.” White donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
In June 2009, prominent St. Louis political power broker Joyce Aboussie exchanged a series of insistent emails with Abedin concerning Aboussie’s efforts to set up a meeting between Clinton and Peabody Energy VP Cartan Sumner. Aboussie wrote, “Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months. This is, by the way, my first request. I really would appreciate your help on this. It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick [Gephardt] and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s.” After further notes from Aboussie, Abedin responded, “We are working on it and I hope we can make something work… we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here.” Aboussie donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
On Saturday, May 16,
2009, mobile communications executive and political activist Jill Iscol
wrote to Clinton, “Please advise to whom I should forward Jacqueline
Novogratz’s request [for a meeting with the secretary of state]. I know you
know her, but honestly, she is so far ahead of the curve and brilliant I
believe she could be enormously helpful to your work.” Clinton subsequently
sent an email to Abedin saying, “Pls print.” Jill and husband Ken Iscol donated
between $500,000 and $1
million to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton subsequently
appointed Novogratz to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
The newly obtained Abedin
emails also contain a memorandum sent to Cheryl Mills from State Department
White House liaison Laura Pena revealing that Rajiv Fernando
was proposed for his controversial appointment to the sensitive International
Security Advisory Board as early as June 2009. Fernando was not actually
appointed until 2011, and his appointment raised a firestorm because, according
to an ABC News report,
“he had no obvious experience in the field.” Fernando donated $1 million
to the Clinton Foundation.The Abedin emails reveal that even U2’s Bono got into the act when former Bill Clinton aide Ben Schwerin, who helped set up the Clinton Foundation, urged Abedin to help the aging rock star broadcast from the international space station. In a May 27, 2009, email with the subject line “Bono/NASA,” Schwerin wrote, “Bono wants to do linkup with the international space station on every show during the tour this year.… Any ideas? Thks.” Bono has been a donor to the Clinton Global Initiative. And in 2011, he gathered top entertainers for “A Decade of Difference: A Concert Celebrating 10 Years of the William J. Clinton Foundation.” According to USA Today, “Some tickets were sold to the public for $50 to $550, and premium seats went for $1,000 to $5,000 on the Foundation website.”
“These new emails confirm that Hillary Clinton abused her office by selling favors to Clinton Foundation donors,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “There needs to be a serious, independent investigation to determine whether Clinton and others broke the law.”
This is the tenth set of
records produced for Judicial Watch by the State Department from the
non-state.gov email accounts of Huma Abedin. The documents were produced
under a court order in
a May 5, 2015, Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit against
the State Department (Judicial Watch,
Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684))
requiring the agency to produce “all emails of official State Department
business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from
January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013, using a ‘non-state’.gov email
address.”
In June, Judicial Watch
uncovered two batches (here and here)
of new Clinton email records through court-ordered discovery. Twice in
May, Judicial Watch uncovered new Clinton emails, including emails that show
Clinton knew about the security risk of her BlackBerry (see here and
here).
Recently,
Judicial Watch released other State Department emails (one batch of 103 pages,
the second of 138 pages),
with newly discovered Clinton emails also going back as far as January 2009.
In March, Judicial
Watch released Clinton
State Department emails dating from February 2009 that also call into question
her statements about her emails. Those emails contained more evidence of the
battle between security officials in the State Department, National Security
Agency, Clinton and her staff over attempts to obtain secure BlackBerrys.On August 9, Judicial Watch produced a 2009 email in which Band directed Abedin and Mills to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon. Band noted that Chagoury is “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us.” Chagoury has donated between $1 million to $5 million to the Foundation, according to foundation documents. He also pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that she believes that the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails. In response to a court order in other Judicial Watch litigation, she declared under penalty of perjury that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.” This new email find is also at odds with her official campaign statement suggesting all “work or potentially work-related emails” were provided to the State Department.
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