Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair privately expressed his misgivings about a Clinton Global Initiative event in Morocco that the candidate had promised to attend.
John Podesta, whose leaked emails have been published in 24 batches by WikiLeaks, responded to a Wall Street Journal article in February 2015 that chronicled recent upticks in foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.
“This is why Morocco would be such a problem,” Podesta wrote. “[M]ore of this the first week she’s out selling her story.”
An email made public this month by WikiLeaks indicated Clinton’s team viewed the Morocco meeting as a “mess.”
Huma Abedin, vice chair of Clinton’s campaign, lamented the fact that the king of Morocco had pledged $12 million in exchange for Clinton’s attendance at the meeting. Pulling out of the event, Abedin said, would prove difficult.
“She created this mess and she knows it,” Abedin wrote.
In April of last year, the event proceeded without Clinton’s involvement. Staff quietly removed her name from the schedule.
The event fell just days after Clinton officially launched her campaign. Podesta’s email indicated he worried about the optics of Clinton leaving the country during her first week of campaigning in order to raise foreign money for her family’s foundation.
Clinton has battled negative headlines about the foundation’s foreign donors since the start of her presidential bid. She has long maintained that no foreign contribution swayed her actions when she served as secretary of state.
