Hillary’s Helpers

News broke late last week that Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s closest aide, was the subject of a criminal probe — until the Obama Justice Department declined to follow up. Count one more favor to Hillary.

The State Department inspector general filed papers launching the investigation in 2013, after Clinton and Abedin had left government employ. The probe targeted the fact that Abedin got paid while on unpaid maternity leave. (She says she actually kept working, but got her paperwork wrong.)

The IG didn’t raise the issue until 2013 because State had no inspector general the entire time Clinton was in charge.

Justice hasn’t explained its refusal to investigate — but the guy in charge was Eric Holder, a veteran of the Bill Clinton administration.

Hillary plainly still has plenty of pals inside State. Why else did it deliver only seven (two partly censored) of nearly 70 pages of Abedin email documents sought by The Associated Press in a Freedom of Information request touching on a different scandal?

Of course, State is also stalling the release of thousands of pages of Hillary emails. Its lawyers last week asked for permission to delay the handover (to a host of media, legal and political groups) until after Jan. 16.

In a related note, State just announced its new “transparency coordinator,” in charge of speeding up compliance with all those requests: Janice Jacobs — who happens to be a maxedout Clinton donor.

Any question about that, said State spokesman John Kirby, is an attack on democracy itself: “There’s nothing wrong with a federal employee, or any other US citizen, making donations to campaigns. This is the United States of America; it’s a democracy.”

Take that, you extremists with your concerns about blatant conflicts of interest.

Then again, Team Hillary and its helpers clearly have no concept of what a conflict of interest might be.