The conservative legal group Judicial Watch obtained the emails as part of its lawsuit against the State Department.
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Indeed, Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band writes to State Department aides and Clinton’s close confidantes, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, that the Lebanese billionaire foundation donor is a “key guy there [in Lebanon] and to us” and, as such, he needs to be put in touch with a “substance person” in the USA government. Band asked the aides to get Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon. In the email Band says Chagoury is a “key guy there [Lebanon] and to us”.
Band also asks that Abedin call Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman to connect him to Chagoury. “I have never met nor spoken to him”.
“I’m also not going to speak to specific redactions”, she replied, stressing that she can’t “speak to specific cases”.
In a separate 10-page email batch uncovered by Judicial Watch, State Department spokesman Brock Johnson flagged in 2012 a “significant” FOIA request to Mills from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Switzerland for laundering money from Nigeria. If Trump wants to persuade truly undecided voters to shun Clinton, he needs to familiarize the voting public with the particulars of what Clinton’s emails suggest, and why they might show conflicts of interest.
He also pledged United States dollars 1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. “This is very important”, Band wrote. Abedin responded, “We have all had him on our radar” and that “Personnel has been sending him options”.
Observers and legal experts say such emails could provide an insight into how the USA government works and how redlines become blurry when influential individuals, including foreign citizens, request favors from government officials.
The emails, many of which are heavily redacted, point to a special relationship between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation, which appears to have directly influenced some of the department’s decisions.
In early 2009, a donor to Clinton’s 2008 campaign, Lana Moresky, asked Clinton directly for help finding an associate a job at the State Department.
This isn’t the summer intern making a casual mistake – it’s her top aides putting the interests of the Clinton Foundation ahead of the interests of the American people. Trump is accusing Clinton of “Pay for Play”, during her work at the State Department in response to the newly released e-mails.
The revelation has raised questions about the nature of the State Department’s relationship with the Clinton Foundation, when she was secretary of state.
Chagoury, he said, “has had no personal contact with Secretary Clinton or any of her staff since 2006”.
Clinton’s campaign denied any connections between the emails and Clinton’s work at the Clinton Foundation.
He continued, “On June 19, 2012, Cheryl Mills, then the Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, boarded an Amtrak Acela train in Washington’s Union Station bound for NY”.
“Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the foundation’s work”, the Clinton campaign said in a statement early today. The FBI plans to turn over the reconstructed Clinton emails to the State Department for public release. “They wanted a clear dilatation between the foundation and the State Department”.
Mills told the attorneys she spoke with a Clinton IT staffer in 2013, after learning the email account of a close Clinton confidante, Sidney Blumenthal, had been compromised by a hacker.
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One especially egregious example, Hayes said, was the role Clinton’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills played at the time.
