Emails reveal how foundation donors got access to Clinton and her aides
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 then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
U2 rocker and philanthropist Bono, also a regular at foundation events, wanted help broadcasting a live link to the International Space Station during concerts.
In each case, according to emails released Monday from 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.
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 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 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.
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 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 new 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, Nev. 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 don't.” Wasserman’s charitable foundation has given the Clinton Foundation between $5million 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.
The appeal appears to have had more success in the case of Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain. In 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.”
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.