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.