Email batch provides additional evidence that Clinton Foundation donors got access at State Department
Newly released State Department emails shed additional light on the relationships Hillary Clinton and her top aides maintained with her family’s foundation during the years she served as secretary of state.
The emails, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch as part of a public-records lawsuit, included one in which a longtime aide to Bill Clinton sought a State Department meeting on behalf of a major foundation donor.
The aide, Doug Band, who played a role in expanding the foundation’s reach, wrote to Hillary Clinton’s State Department staff requesting a meeting for a wealthy Nigerian businessman of Lebanese descent who has given the Clinton Foundation $1 million to $5 million in donations, according to disclosure reports.
“We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Band wrote in the email addressed to Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, two of Clinton’s closest aides at State. “As you know he’s a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”
Abedin responded with the name of the recent U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, who was serving as acting assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs. She added: “I’ll talk to Jeff.”
Hillary Clinton's latest answer on classified emails, in full
At the NABJ-NAHJ conference on Aug. 5 in Washington, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reiterated her stance that she didn't send or receive classified emails while serving as secretary of state. (Reuters)
As it turned out, Feltman said he never connected with the billionaire. “Gilbert Chagoury never contacted me,” he said in response to a question Wednesday from The Washington Post. “I have never met nor spoken to him. No one ever told me he was seeking me out.”
The exchange sparked an immediate response from Clinton’s critics, who say that the Chagoury email along with other State Department correspondence released over the past year as part of various inquiries and lawsuits suggest a pattern in which donors to Clinton causes seem to have received special access to Clinton’s State Department.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pointed Wednesday to the document release, saying the emails reveal Clinton’s “pay to play” approach to governance.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the documents explain why Clinton and her aides have been reluctant to release official communications.