Huma Abedin, a former aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department and now the highest-paid member of her campaign staff, is the focus of a new 36-page report from a Republican group.
America Rising, a Republican super political action committee that has focused on digging up research about Clinton, released the Abedin report Thursday amid growing interest in Abedin’s State Department activities.
The report provided details about a controversial employment arrangement that allowed Abedin to collect paychecks from the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and a consulting firm called Teneo Strategies at the same time.
Her “special government employee” designation “freed her from the requirement that she disclose her private earnings,” according to the report. That arrangement has been at the center of a congressional inquiry led by Sen. Charles Grassley, who has sought more information about how and why Abedin was able to secure a designation typically reserved for outside experts.
Teneo represents a variety of international clients and has offices around the world, from Zurich to Dubai. Yet Abedin was permitted to remain at the State Department, with constant access to the secretary of state, while she served those clients at Teneo, earning a reported $355,000 for her consultancy in addition to the $135,000 in taxpayer dollars she pocketed at State.
Abedin’s simultaneous employment with the government and Teneo only emerged after a “friend” divulged the details, according to the report. State Department officials and Clinton insiders have refused to discuss the arrangement.
But it clearly exposed Abedin to potential conflicts of interest, such as an instance in which she was asked by her superior at Teneo to help secure a White House appointment for a Clinton Foundation donor.
Other groups, such as the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch, have looked into Abedin’s special government employee status. A federal judge reopened Judicial Watch’s closed Freedom of Information Act lawsuit earlier this year after Clinton’s use of a private email server came to light.
In that case, documents released have demonstrated Clinton’s personal involvement in helping Abedin obtain her personnel status in 2012.
Abedin was forced to turn over personal records to the State Department after officials learned of her own use of a private email address, which was hosted on Clinton’s server. Some of the emails published so far indicate Abedin discussed sensitive issues, such as travel plans for the secretary of state, on her personal account.
The report lays out Abedin’s involvement with Clinton from her time as a White House intern and personal assistant to the former first lady to the present day, where she is accompanying Clinton on the campaign trail.
“America Rising is releasing this comprehensive report because it’s important to shed light on Huma Abedin’s ethical controversies, as so many of them directly involve Secretary Clinton,” Jeff Bechdel, spokesman for America Rising, told the Washington Examiner. “Given her influence on the campaign and their emerging interconnected scandals, it is increasingly clear that Abedin’s ethics are extremely relevant to understanding the ethics of Secretary Clinton.”
