Hillary Clinton relied on a former State Department aide to screen her emails for work-related messages, even though the arrangement forced the staffer to make judgements about her own emails along with Clinton’s.
Heather Samuelson, a former Clinton campaign staffer, was the first to filter Clinton’s emails for potential federal records, according to a report by Politico.
But Samuelson’s own work-related emails were frequently mixed with those of top Clinton aides like Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan — meaning she decided which of her own messages and which of her co-worker’s messages would ultimately be disclosed to the public.
Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, told the House Select Committee on Benghazi last week that Samuelson was the first to sift through the emails and decide which were federal records and which were personal.
Mills and David Kendall, Clinton’s attorney, then made the final call about which messages would be handed over to the State Department.
Samuelson reportedly had no background in federal record-keeping.
She appears to have worked for Clinton since 2002, when she began as an assistant treasurer for Clinton’s political action committee, HILL PAC, according to her LinkedIn page.
She worked on compliance issues for Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential bid before seemingly following the Democratic candidate into the State Department.
Samuelson served as a senior adviser and White House liaison for Clinton’s entire tenure at the State Department. She is presently an assistant counsel at the White House.
During her time at State, she was involved in issues that put her in regular contact with Clinton’s top aides, including several staffing efforts during Clinton’s first year in office.
For example, emails show Samuelson was involved in finding a job for Jenny Harkin, the daughter of then Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at the State Department.
Tom Harkin, a former Democratic senator from Iowa, had called Clinton to secure a job for his daughter.
Critics have raised concerns about the fact that Clinton’s staff were the sole arbiters of which emails would be submitted to the State Department as federal records. Some have questioned why a neutral party was not permitted to make those determinations.
