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Home Front: Politix
Chicago Tribune: Emails raise questions about Clinton Foundation donors' access at State
2016-08-11
[Chicago Tribune] 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."

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 and 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.

"They show the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law," he said.

Officials from the Clinton campaign and the foundation portray the email communications as innocuous, in some cases even helpful to U.S. foreign policy goals.
Posted by:Besoeker

#6  Leaked e-mail shows Soros urged Clinton to intervene in Albania civil unrest
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy   2016-08-11 15:08  

#5  If even a lib rag sees it then why isn't Trump all over this? He's nattering on about Obama founding ISIS. Apparently he is more about picking fights with other people than he is stopping Hillary. This is a great opportunity to bring her down, and he is wasting his fire on Obama.

Is he trying to lose?
Posted by: Woodrow Tojo4845   2016-08-11 12:15  

#4  They prefer access and spoon fed talking points to doing actual "Joutnalism"
Posted by: Frank G on the road   2016-08-11 11:14  

#3  Some potential point makers for Trump:

1. I will accept ZERO salary.
2. I will take NO $8m Hawaii or South African Vaca's
3. My mother-in-law will NOT be living in the WH.
4. I seldom golf.
5. Rappers, NFL or NBA players will never see the inside of my WH.
6. I will accept NO retirement pension.
7. I do NOT celebrate EID.
8. The WH will be heated with WV & PA coal.
7. I will likely serve only one term.
8. Loretta Lynch will be fired on day #1.
9. Jim Comey will be demoted to field agent.
10. NRA memberships will be tax deductible.
11. If some punk foreign nation makes a threat, takes a hostage, or attacks the U.S., I will say nothing, but there will be hell to pay within 24 hours and it will involve the USAF.
12. I will take Putin White Tail hunting in Southern Illinois first day of opening season.

If you want me to come to work for you, great. If you'd rather have someone else, no problem. I'm not doing it for the money. You decide. Have a nice day.

Posted by: Besoeker   2016-08-11 10:30  

#2  The first line in the story cites that a conservative group acquired the emails. See how the liberal press operates? It marginalized the source. My question to the Chicago Tribune- how come your vast staff didn't dig to find this material? Oh, that's right, they are busy sifting through Sarah Palin's trash up in Alaska.
Posted by: jack salami   2016-08-11 09:27  

#1  Meanwhile, others in the MSM have no questions because they are completely in the tank for Hildabeest and want to play "pile-on" with Trump. They should be ashamed of themselves for masquerading as news types. Glad that Trump is insisting on ground rules for the upcoming debates such as no more Candy Crowley types. Please add Don Lemon to the list of verboten kangaroo courts interrogators/waterboarders. Also Wolf Blitzer, Charley Rose, and others of this ilk. In the past, Romney and McCain got raped by these MSM types.
Posted by: JohnQC   2016-08-11 09:07  

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