Posted on 08/13/2015 7:29:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It was probably inevitable that the woman always at Hillary Clinton’s side would one day be sucked into the vortex of suspicion and scandal surrounding the Democratic presidential frontrunner. For top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, that day seems to have arrived.
Though rumors of impropriety have swirled around Abedin for over two years, in the past two weeks they’ve snowballed into concrete allegations. Last week, the State Department inspector general claimed that the trusted Clinton confidant owes the government nearly $10,000 for violating rules regarding vacation and sick leave. And in court on Monday, Hillary Clinton admitted Abedin had an e-mail account on the now-infamous private server run out of Clinton’s house while she was secretary of state, and that the account “was used at times for government business.” State Department investigators say they’ve now expanded a probe into Clinton’s use of private e-mail to include “top aides,” meaning Abedin is almost certainly under federal investigation for the possible exchange of unsecured, classified data.
Despite a glacial government response time, multiple investigations into Abedin’s simultaneous employment at the State Department and a consulting firm tied to the Clintons are also approaching their peak. Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has already accused Abedin of leveraging her dual public and private roles to “deliver favors” for key Clinton Foundation donors.
Is Abedin the new Doug Band, the longtime Bill Clinton aide who eventually became a liability for the former first family’s political ambitions? And will Abedin’s escalating scandals compel the Clintons to cut her loose, just as they jettisoned Band?
Band began his career as a lowly “body man” for then-President Clinton in the mid 90s, but soon morphed into a key aide in Clinton’s post-White House life. He was the gatekeeper to the former president and one of the chief architects of the Clinton Foundation’s Global Initiative. Many described him as the son Clinton never had.
A 2013 article in The New Republic detailed how Band’s decision to found private consulting firm Teneo Holdings in 2010 caused a rift in the Clintons’ inner circle. The former aide aggressively touted his relationship with the Clintons to prospective clients, and the Clintons worried about their ostensible connection to scandals such as the one surrounding Teneo patron and disgraced MF Global CEO Jon Corzine. Band’s relentless push to capitalize on his Clinton connections brought his loyalty into question, and the relationship soured before he left his position at the Clinton Foundation in May of this year.
Like Band, Abedin worked her way up in the Clinton political machine. From her start as Hillary Clinton’s White House intern, she rose to become the former first lady’s right-hand woman at both the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. She is said to carefully control access to Clinton, and the two are extremely close — at Abedin’s wedding, Clinton described her as “a second daughter.”
Abedin’s behavior may soon become a drag on her boss’s presidential prospects. But much like Band’s ultimately did, Abedin’s behavior may soon become a drag on her boss’s presidential prospects. On July 31, Grassley exposed the State Department inspector general’s finding that Abedin owed $9,858 to the government for unauthorized vacations and leaves of absence. Abedin’s lawyers dispute the claim, saying she was working even while on vacation in Italy and during her maternity leave. The probe, which Grassley says may be criminal in nature, is ongoing.
This isn’t Grassley’s first look into Abedin’s time at the State Department. For over two years, he has sought answers on her simultaneous employment as a consultant at Teneo — Doug Band’s firm — and as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at Foggy Bottom.
Between June 2012 and February 2013, Abedin was granted “special government employee” status, enabling her to function both as Clinton’s right-hand woman at State and as a consultant to Teneo. Concerned that Abedin may have leveraged her high-level government position to benefit Teneo’s clients, in August 2013 Grassley requested that the State Department turn over all official communications between Abedin and Band.
That request remains unfulfilled, despite the Judiciary Committee chairman’s numerous inquiries over the past two years. Last week, the senator said the department wouldn’t even return his staff’s phone calls. Allan Blutstein, a former government FOIA attorney, says that the State Department’s delay “seems unusual,” since documents requested by the chairperson of a congressional committee are generally released expeditiously, absent claims of executive privilege. “Most agencies, to maintain effective relations, will process those requests as quickly as practicable,” he says. “Two years is a long time not to respond to a committee chair’s request.”
Nevertheless, Grassley appears to have gained some knowledge of Abedin’s Teneo-related communications without State’s help. A letter released by his office on July 30 claims there are over 7,300 e-mails between Abedin and Band on her official government account. In one, Band allegedly urges Abedin to ask Hillary Clinton to intercede with President Obama on behalf of one of his clients, Judith Rodin, who was seeking a White House job. As president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rodin had steered hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation — something Band reportedly noted in the e-mail.
Last week, Grassley accused the State Department of “a pattern of conduct that clearly demonstrates a lack of cooperation and bad faith.” On August 5, he placed a Senate hold on the department’s nomination of an important assistant secretary. The next day, he announced his intention to place holds on 20 more State nominees. “The department must recognize that it has an obligation to respond to congressional inquiries in a timely and reasonable manner,” he said in a press release. (The State Department did not respond to NR’s request for comment.)
Clinton’s enemies are confident that they can prove the link between Abedin’s alleged misdeeds and Clinton herself. Other officials have also expressed frustration over the State Department’s delay in producing Abedin’s communications. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, presiding over an Associated Press lawsuit, slammed the department for its slow response on July 20 and ordered expedited processing of the e-mails. “It appears they didn’t get anything done for two years,” Leon said.
With pressure building on multiple fronts, the documents detailing Abedin’s relationship with Teneo are likely to be released soon. If those documents prove damaging, the Clintons may have to decide whether she is too much of a liability to keep around.
Still, it would be surprising if the Clintons cut ties with Abedin the way they did with Band. The State Department’s approval of her request for the special status needed to work at Teneo suggests she joined the consulting firm with Hillary Clinton’s blessing. The scandal now engulfing Abedin over her use of a private e-mail account is the same one that’s already swallowed her boss. And unlike Band’s, Abedin’s loyalty to the Clintons has never been questioned.
“Huma Abedin has spent nearly two decades in public service, and is widely known to be one of the hardest-working people in government,” says Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill. “She is smart, loyal, compassionate, and she is an invaluable part of the team. Period.”
Some political analysts doubt that an Abedin scandal, or a series of scandals, would damage the Clinton campaign. “The average person has no idea who Huma Abedin is, and I expect that to be the case throughout the campaign,” says Nathan Gonzales, co-founder of the Rothenberg and Gonzales Political Report. “If someone is taking issue with any of her actions, they probably weren’t going to vote for Clinton anyway.”
But Clinton’s enemies are confident that they can prove the link between Abedin’s alleged misdeeds and Clinton herself. “The motivations of why Huma is doing these things for the Clinton Foundation and for Teneo are important,” says David Bossie, a perennial Clinton foe whose organization Citizens United is pursuing its own lawsuit for Abedin’s records. “All roads lead back to Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter at National Review.
Her hubby is not doing so badly financially himself.... as a highly paid ( get this ) PR consultant.
RE: What happened to Michele Bachmann when she called attention to Huma?
She was attacked by John McCain.
Technically since she’s married to Anthony, the Clinton’s would be cutting their Weiner loose.
Stay outta the park Huma!
You should care.There is plenty out there on how this MUSLIM belongs to the Muslim brotherhood..
Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime confidante, is currently the vice chair of her 2016 presidential campaign. “I’m not sure Hillary could walk out the door without Huma,” Clinton adviser Mandy Grunwald said back during the days of Hillary’s first run for the presidency. Huma and Hillary are inseparable, including having been linked together on a private e-mail network while Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State and Ms. Abedin was her deputy chief of staff. If Hillary Clinton were to be elected president of the United States, Ms. Abedin will no doubt be right there with Hillary as her right hand person in the White House. And that may well be a major coup for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose strategic plan calls for destroying Western civilization from within and “‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believe
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/258726/time-huma-abedin-come-out-shadows-joseph-klein
She was also attacked by the entire “news” media.
Michele Bachmann’s baseless attack on Huma Abedin
By WASHINGTON POST Editorial Board July 19, 2012
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michele-bachmanns-baseless-attack-on-huma-abedin/2012/07/19/gJQAFhkiwW_story.html
TO CONSPIRACY theorists like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the Obama administration’s approach to the Arab world is the product not of considered diplomacy but of wicked “influence operations,” traceable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agents. Exhibit A among those agents with murky “ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood, Ms. Bachmann warns darkly, is Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Ms. Bachmann’s smear of Ms. Abedin, a 37-year-old Muslim American born and educated in this country, was contained in a letter last month to the State Department’s inspector general’s office. It would be simple to ignore the baseless and paranoid assertions of Ms. Bachmann were she not a member of Congress and an also-ran in the recent race for the Republican presidential nomination. Her status doesn’t confer respectability on her views — Americans are inured to all manner of nonsense from Congress — but it does call for a response, if only to restore a dose of rationality to the public discourse.
That response was delivered effectively Wednesday on the floor of the Senate by John McCain, an Arizona Republican who knows Ms. Abedin, as well as what it means to be slimed in public life. Mr. McCain, who as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000 was subjected to malicious and false rumors that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, spoke with feeling about Ms. Abedin.
“Huma represents what is best about America,” the senator said. She is “the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully.”
Ms. Bachmann’s letter, signed by four other Republican congressmen, asserts that Ms. Abedin’s father (who died when she was a teenager), mother and brother are “connected” to the Muslim Brotherhood. It calls on the State Department’s inspector general to investigate the organization’s supposed influence in the U.S. government. In a separate letter, Ms. Bachmann asks how Ms. Abedin, who is Ms. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, received her security clearance.
Ms. Bachmann’s accusations are tissue-thin garbage of the someone-said-something variety — or, as Mr. McCain put it, “nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant.”
Among the co-signers of Ms. Bachmann’s letter are Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, notorious for describing abortion as having done more harm to blacks than slavery; Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, who described then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as “uppity”; and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, known for evidence-free rants about plots involving U.S. passport-bearing “terror babies,” born here and trained overseas to carry out attacks on America.
Spurred or shamed by Mr. McCain’s courageous remarks, some Republican leaders, but not all, have gathered themselves to repudiate Ms. Bachmann and her co-signers. On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) praised Ms. Abedin’s “sterling character,” noting that the accusations against her are “dangerous.”
Ms. Bachmann’s accusations are in the squalid tradition of McCarthyism and other shameful chapters of our history in which politicians have slandered their rivals as un-American, allied with enemy forces or guilty by association with shadowy forces. Her tactics are no less ugly than those of her predecessors. Thanks to Mr. McCain, they may be less effective.
Read more about this debate:
Mary C. Curtis: Are Bachmann and Sununu attacks part of a new McCarthyism?
When the SHTF, she would take a trip (alone) to Iran to spend some more time with her family. Her poor hubby would have to stay behind, Jews visiting Iran usually lead to bad outcome.
"Huma will be protected by the Democratic Crime Syndicate. " - realcleanguy
Let me fix that for ya...
Huma will be protected by the Democratic/Muslim Brotherhood Crime Syndicate.
;D
“Huma represents what is best about America.”
Huma is married to Anthony Weiner, aka Carlos Danger.
Using the Slate.com name generator, I have found her “Carlos Danger” pseudonym to be Ricardo Calamity.
Quite fitting, I’d say.
Two chances at sucking Huma and her Brotherhood connections under: First Weiner, now Hillary.
Any perceived puns intentional.
It’s worth it for that company to have a direct line to the husband of the potential future president’s “body woman.”
From some of what I read and hear, I often wonder is Hilary is just a puppet and Huma controls the strings!!
With the Nazi-Moslem Brotherhood and al Qaeda
in the White Mosque, systematically ignored by the
submissive selfserving lying GOP,
Huma is working for THIS government.
When the time gets right she will be wisked back to Saudia Arabia and not extradited back here. Plans much be in the works unless an arrest without bail is in the offing, and soon.
KSAZ Fox10 Phoenix ^ | Aug 13, 2015
"http://www.fox10phoenix.com/story/29777538/2015/08/13/mccain-compares-trump-to-pig"
The sludge water is circling the drain. Will Hillary end her campaign? Will Hillary be held accountable for her many, MANY acts against this country and against God? I certainly hope so. I do care. At some point the chickens will come home to roost. I believe they are on approach to the coop now.
Yes, you do. We need Muslim Brotherhood moles removed from our government.
I totally agree. I apologize for an unclear post. What I meant was, in relation to the headline's apparent attempt to elicit sympathy over whether she will survive, is that I don't care one iota if she survives.
If she is complicit or guilty of breaking Federal laws regarding secret communications, she needs solitary confinement for the next thirty years, and her boss as well. And if she shared information with foreign enemies, she needs to hang, and ditto for anyone else who did so.
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