Hillary Clinton’s top State Department aide sent internal agency correspondence to Clinton Foundation officials, raising new questions about how her inner circle handled sensitive information.
The internal emails, which were obtained by Citizens United through the Freedom of Information Act, have since been classified. They were passed to the Clinton Foundation by Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff.
In one instance, Mills forwarded to Amitabh Desai, the Clinton Foundation’s director of foreign policy, an email from the assistant secretary of state for African affairs that is now classified.
The redacted message bears the subject “Developments in the Eastern Congo” and apparently discussed the activities of Rwanda in the war-torn country.
Johnnie Carson, the African affairs official, concluded the July 2012 email by noting that he had sent Clinton a “classified memo” about the situation and was simply updating Mills and several others on the most recent problems in the Congo.
Mills told Desai she was sharing the State Department email with him because former President Bill Clinton was “in contact” with Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda.
“[Bill Clinton] has been talking about giving Kagame a plenary role at CGI,” Desai said in response, referring to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Kagame participated in a high-profile meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Marrakech, Morocco earlier this year.
The interactions of Hillary Clinton’s State Department staff with employees at the Clinton Foundation have troubled her Republican critics, who suggest contact with the sprawling philanthropy could have exposed the secretary of state to potential conflicts of interest.
Additional emails obtained by Citizens United indicate Desai had a direct line to Mills when it came to approving paid speaking engagements for the former president.
Mills at times denied Desai’s requests, exercising her authority as a top State Department official.
For example, she flatly instructed Desai to decline an invitation for Bill Clinton to speak at an event in North Korea after Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, arranged the engagement.
Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, began working for the Clinton Foundation in 2012 after the secretary of state personally greenlighted a controversial employment arrangement that allowed Abedin to collect paychecks from the charity, the State Department and a consulting firm at the same time.
Abedin’s interactions with the Clinton Foundation have also come under fire from critics who hope to highlight the intersection of the charity’s work and that of the State Department.
