Wednesday 10 August 2016

More on Hillary Clinton

Newly Released Emails Highlight Clinton Foundation’s Ties to State Department

Aide to Bill Clinton asked Mrs. Clinton’s assistants to set up meeting between State, foundation donor

Long-time aide to Hillary Clinton Huma Abedin watches as Mrs. Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Oct. 22, 2015. While at the State Department, Ms. Abedin received a special designation that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work at the Clinton Foundation. PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES


9 August, 2016


WASHINGTON—A conservative watchdog group on Tuesday released 296 pages of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal server, including many exchanges that weren’t handed over to the government as part of the Democratic nominee’s archive.

The new emails, released by the group Judicial Watch, offer fresh examples of how top Clinton Foundation officials sought access to the State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the State Department.

A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by former President Bill Clinton, didn’t immediately return a request for comment. Mrs. Clinton had attached her name to the foundation after she left the U.S. government and subsequently removed it when she started her presidential campaign.
In an exchange from April 2009, a longtime aide to Mr. Clinton told three of Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers that it was “important to take care of” a particular person, whose name has been redacted from the document. That person had written the aide, Doug Band, under the subject line “A favor…” to thank him for the “opportunity to go on the Haiti trip,” which the person called “eye-opening.” Mr. Band was a chief adviser in helping Mr. Clinton launch the Clinton Foundation after leaving the White House.
Huma Abedin, a longtime confidante of Mrs. Clinton who is now working for her campaign, replied to Mr. Band: “We have all had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.” Mr. Band responded: “Great.” Mr. Band was an important figure in helping Mr. Clinton set up his postpresidential career and has since co-founded a New York company called Teneo Holdings.
While at the State Department, Ms. Abedin received a special designation that allowed her to work at the agency while also doing outside work. During that period, she held two other positions, at the Clinton Foundation and at Teneo.
Mr. Band didn’t return a request for comment.
In a separate exchange, Mr. Band asked Ms. Abedin and Cheryl Mills, another top aide to Mrs. Clinton, to set up a meeting between a State Department official and a top donor to the Clinton Foundation.
We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Mr. Band wrote in April 2009. “As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”
Mr. Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its disclosures.
Ms. Abedin responded with the name of the State Department official, Jeff Feltman, who had served as a U.S. ambassador to Lebanon before becoming U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. “I’m sure he knows him,” she wrote. “I’ll talk to Jeff.”
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Band shot back: “Better if you call him. Now preferable. This is very important.”
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said in a statement: “Neither of these emails involve the Secretary or relate to the Foundation’s work. They are communications between her aides and the President’s personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the Secretary’s former staffers who was not employed by the Foundation.”
Mr. Chagoury, who has longstanding ties to the Clintons, has a controversial past. In the mid-1990s, he was known for his close association with Nigeria’s military dictator, Sani Abacha, which helped him land lucrative business contracts in construction and other areas. In 2003, Mr. Chagoury helped organized a Caribbean trip where Mr. Clinton was paid $100,000 for a speech. Both Mr. Chagoury and Mr. Clinton attended Mr. Band’s wedding celebration in France in 2007, the Journal reported at the time.

The Nigerian embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to inquiries about Mr. Chagoury. 
The latest emails provided further fodder for Republicans who have been critical of Mrs. Clinton’s ties to her family’s foundation during her time at the State Department. While Mrs. Clinton is no longer involved with the foundation, her husband and daughter, Chelsea, continue to attend the foundation’s events. Mr. Clinton said in June that he would have to rethink his role at the foundation and its fundraising if his wife is elected president in November.

That the Clinton Foundation was calling in favors barely 3 months into Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department is deeply troubling, and it is yet another reminder of the conflicts of interest and unethical wheeling and dealing she’d bring to the White House,” said Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, in a statement Tuesday.
The emails also served as a reminder of the Clinton campaign’s struggle to shake the email controversy. Mrs. Clinton had her private server set up about a week before she was sworn in as secretary of state. She later said she used the private account because it was more convenient than keeping separate personal and official email addresses.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last month she would close the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information while she was secretary of state, officially ending the yearlong legal drama that had plagued the Democrat’s campaign. 

But the issue resurfaced last week when fact-checkers and critics disputed Mrs. Clinton’s claims that Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey had characterized her answers, both in public and private, on the issue as “truthful.”
Mr. Comey has said she didn’t lie to investigators; he declined to characterize her public comments. Later that week, she said she had perhaps “short-circuited” her response, since her public remarks echoed her testimony to the FBI. 
Republican nominee Donald Trump criticized her comment, tweeting that “anybody whose mind ‘SHORT CIRCUITS’ is not fit to be our president!” In a second tweet, he added: “Very dangerous!”

Crooked Hillary said loudly, and for the world to see, that she "SHORT CIRCUITED" when answering a question on her e-mails. Very dangerous!


This is from 2008

Keith Olbermann Special Comment: Clinton-Obama Assassination


Keith Olbermann delivers a special comment about Hillary Clinton and her recent reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination and the inference to why she is continuing her campaign. "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

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