A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide, blasted Sen. Charles Grassley Friday for accusations that he said “unfairly tarnished” Abedin’s reputation.
“No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves,” wrote Miguel Rodriguez, Abedin’s attorney, in a letter to the State Department Friday.
Grassley had raised questions about Abedin’s simultaneous employment at the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and a controversial consulting firm called Teneo Strategies in a July 30 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry.
The Iowa Republican highlighted an alleged instance in which Abedin was asked by her employer at Teneo, former Clinton aide Douglas Band, to use her high-level government employment to secure a White House position for a Clinton Foundation donor.
But Rodriguez called the suggestion that Abedin had delivered such favors “unfortunate and unfounded,” noting the donor in question had received her White House appointment in 2010, while Abedin did not officially begin working for Teneo until 2012.
Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, had cited reports from the State Department’s inspector general in his letter questioning Abedin’s record at the agency.
“[I]t appears that neither Chairman Grassley nor his staff have reviewed the OIG documents on which the allegations in their letter are based,” Abedin’s attorney wrote.
Among the charges in Grassley’s inquiry was the suggestion that Abedin had been overpaid by $33,000 for leave she never took.
Rodriguez said Abedin did indeed take a vacation to Italy and France in 2011, which she paid for personally. However, Rodriguez noted, Abedin continued to work while traveling in Europe.
Abedin’s attorney said the State Department “currently is reviewing” the inspector general’s finding that the aide was overpaid for maternity and personal leave during her time at the agency, as he said Abedin “extensively worked during those periods.”
Thousands of emails sent between Abedin and Band, which Grassley highlighted as potential evidence of a conflict of interest for Abedin, exist only because the two were included “on the same mass email distribution lists,” according to Rodriguez.
Grassley first pushed for an investigation of Abedin’s unusual employment status in March.
The personnel arrangement is also the subject of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.
That case prompted the State Department to seek the private emails of Abedin and Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.
Abedin used an email account on Clinton’s private server to shield some of her government communications, according to a sworn affidavit filed by Clinton in the Judicial Watch case.
