Clinton’s Private E-Mail Use Said to Frustrate Top Aide Huma Abedin

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Both witnesses to Abedin’s testimony described her as cooperative.

A top aide to Hillary Clinton said the former secretary of state’s use of a private e-mail server to conduct government business on at least one occasion got in the way of Clinton’s work and left the aide frustrated, according to two people who witnessed the aide’s deposition Tuesday.

Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and now the vice chair of her presidential campaign, was being deposed about the context of a November 2010 e-mail she sent Clinton that they “should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.” Prompting the note, according to the e-mail chain releasedlast week by the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act, was a missed scheduled phone call, one of a number of communications mishaps detailed in Clinton's 55,000-page e-mail record. 

Clinton responded in the 2010 exchange that she could get a “separate address or device” but said she didn’t “want any risk of the personal being accessible,” according to the e-mail chain. Abedin replied that the missed communications were “not a good system.” 

Abedin testified that “the personal” referred to non-government messages Clinton was also exchanging via the e-mail address rather than any improper treatment of government records, according to one of the people who witnessed the deposition. Abedin, whose close relationship with Clinton has led her to be described as a surrogate daughter, was one of a handful of aides to have her own account on the clintonemail.com server.

Both witnesses to Abedin's testimony described her as cooperative. A spokesman for the Clinton campaign, Brian Fallon, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. A lawyer for Clinton, David Kendall, declined to comment. A lawyer for Abedin, Miguel Rodriguez, declined to comment.

The deposition was conducted as part of a lawsuit brought by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which sued the State Department under FOIA in 2013 to obtain access to records regarding Abedin’s simultaneous employment at the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, and a consultancy that catered to international clients. (Abedin’s lawyers say she didn’t do work that would have posed a conflict of interest.) As part of that lawsuit, the presiding judge granted Judicial Watch permission to engage in what he called “limited” discovery into the server and department records practices.  

The server set-up has dogged Clinton’s presidential run and provided a frequent attack line for her opponents, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump has suggested she compromised U.S. secrets with her communications practices and should face jail.

The testimony came on the same day that Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee, which helped uncover Clinton’s e-mail practices,released their final report. It criticized State Department decision-making surrounding the attack on a diplomatic facility in Libya in 2012 that killed four Americans, but contained few revelations about Clinton.

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On Monday, Judicial Watch released a cache of e-mails from Abedin that contained messages between her and Clinton. Like some released earlier, the documents were obtained by Judicial Watch as part of other FOIA litigation and contained some e-mails not found in the messages Clinton’s lawyers had sent to the State Department. Clinton has publicly said she gave the State Department all relevant e-mails.

Fallon on Monday said Clinton had turned over “all potentially work-related emails” still in her possession when she received the 2014 request from the State Department, according to the Associated Press. “Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have,” Fallon said last week, according to AP.

The president of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said the e-mails released Monday show Clinton “did not turn over all” records in her possession and raised questions about what other records should have been produced.  “I keep on asking, What else is out there?” Fitton said.

In one message released Monday from early in her tenure, Clinton appeared to fret about records management practices.

“I have just realized I have no idea how my papers are treated at State,” Clinton wrote to Abedin in March 2009. “Who manages both my personal and official files?”

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, “Secretary Clinton’s paper files were appropriately filed and archived.” Toner repeated in a statement that Clinton had said repeatedly that the 55,000 pages represented “all federal email records in her custody.”

During his June 23 deposition in the matter, Bryan Pagliano, a former Clinton aide who helped maintain the server, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, according to a transcript released by Judicial Watch. He refused to answer more than 100 questions on issues including how the server was set up, whether it was used to thwart the Freedom of Information Act and whether Clinton deleted government records. A lawyer for Pagliano, Mark MacDougall, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Records released by Judicial Watch show Abedin and Pagliano discussing maintenance of the server and detail on at least one occasion a possible hack attempt.

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Clinton Foundation received subpoena from State Department investigators

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Investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation last fall seeking documents about the charity’s projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state, according to people familiar with the subpoena and written correspondence about it.

The subpoena also asked for records related to Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide who for six months in 2012 was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation, Clinton’s personal office, and a private consulting firm with ties to the Clintons.

The full scope and status of the inquiry, conducted by the State Department’s inspector general, were not clear from the material correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.

A foundation representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing inquiry, said the initial document request had been narrowed by investigators and that the foundation is not the focus of the probe.

A State IG spokesman declined to comment on that assessment or on the subpoena.

On the campaign trail, Clinton is rarely seen in public without Abedin somewhere nearby. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Representatives for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Abedin also declined comment.

There is no indication that the watchdog is looking at Clinton. But as she runs for president in part by promoting her leadership of the State Department, an inquiry involving a top aide and the relationship between her agency and her family’s charity could further complicate her campaign.

For months, Clinton has wrangled with controversy over her use of a private email server, which has sparked a separate investigation by the same State Department inspector general’s office. There is also an FBI investigation into whether her system compromised national security.

Clinton was asked about the FBI investigation at a debate last week and said she was “100 percent confident” nothing would come of it. Last month, Clinton denied a Fox News report that the FBI had expanded its probe to include ties between the foundation and the State Department. She called that report “an unsourced, irresponsible” claim with “no basis.”

During the years Clinton served as secretary of state, the foundation was led by her husband, former president Bill Clinton. She joined its board after leaving office in February 2013 and helped run it until launching her White House bid in April.

Abedin served as deputy chief of staff at State starting in 2009. For the second half of 2012, she participated in the “special government employee” program that enabled her to work simultaneously in the State Department, the foundation, Hillary Clinton’s personal office and Teneo, a private consultancy with close ties to the Clintons.

Abedin has been a visible part of Hillary Clinton’s world since she served as an intern in the 1990s for the then-first lady while attending George Washington University. On the campaign trail, Clinton is rarely seen in public without Abedin somewhere nearby.

Republican lawmakers have alleged that foreign officials and other powerful interests with business before the U.S. government gave large donations to the Clinton Foundation to curry favor with a sitting secretary of state and a potential future president.

Both Clintons have dismissed those accusations, saying donors contributed to the $2 billion foundation to support its core missions: improving health care, education and environmental work around the world.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic primary, has largely avoided raising either issue in his campaign. Last spring, Sanders expressed concerns about the Clinton Foundation being part of a political system “dominated by money.”

Sanders has batted away questions about the email scandal, famously saying at a debate last fall that, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”

The potential consequences of the IG investigation are unclear. Unlike federal prosecutors, inspectors general have the authority to subpoena documents without seeking approval from a grand jury or a judge.

But their power is limited. They are able to obtain documents, but they cannot compel testimony. At times, IG inquiries result in criminal charges, but sometimes they lead to administrative review, civil penalties or reports that have no legal consequences.

The IG has investigated Abedin before. Last year, the watchdog concluded she was overpaid nearly $10,000 because of violations of sick leave and vacation policies, a finding that Abedin and her attorneys have contested.

Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), have alleged that Abedin’s role at the center of overlapping public and private Clinton worlds created the potential for conflicts of interest.

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