Newly disclosed State Department emails show officials working under Hillary Clinton prioritized companies that were connected to Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton or their family’s foundation when coordinating Haitian earthquake relief through the State Department in 2010.
A company with no ties to the Clintons, however, was directed to a generic website to apply for the opportunity to land an aid contract.
The 60 pages of emails were among the most direct indications that Hillary Clinton’s State Department extended preferential treatment to friends and donors — a pattern that was obscured by her decision to shield her emails from the public by storing them on a private server.
Emails show companies were labeled FOBs, “Friends of Bill,” or WJC VIPs, “William Jefferson Clinton VIPs,” by the State Department aide tasked with fielding Haitian aid proposals.
That aide, Caitlin Klevorick, kept in frequent contact with executives at the Clinton Foundation as she prioritized projects to receive State Department funding and travel assistance.
Klevorick was one of several Hillary Clinton staffers who received an employment waiver known as “special government employee” status, which allowed insiders like Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills to collect paychecks from other Clinton-connected groups while continuing their work for the State Department.
Mills, Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff, coordinated Haitian relief efforts out of the U.S. Agency for International Development, an arm of the State Department. USAID doled out grants and contracts for companies selected to provide assistance in Haiti in the wake of a devastating earthquake there in 2010.
In one exchange from Jan. 15, 2010, for example, Klevorick and Clinton Foundation staff scrambled to help a top foundation donor, Denis O’Brien, clear the necessary hurdles in order to enter Haiti and operate his digital service company Digicel.
Digicel received millions of dollars from USAID to hand out free cell phones in Haiti.
The Clinton Foundation has weathered fierce criticism for its conduct in Haiti due to high-profile aid projects that failed to yield promised benefits for earthquake victims.
Digicel was among many participants in that effort. Through its work with the Clinton Foundation, Digicel invested in a luxury hotel in Port-au-Prince while homeless Haitians huddled in slums all around the city.
The emails were obtained by the Republican National Committee through the Freedom of Information Act. They were first provided to ABC News but were also shared with the Washington Examiner.
