New e-mails reveal Clinton Foundation lobbied Hillary’s State Department

Hillary Clinton’s State Department e-mails are the gift that keeps on giving. In the latest batch, obtained by government watchdog group Judicial Watch, questions are raised about the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the DoS and how the two influenced each other.

Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit it filed against the State Department and it received back heavily redacted transcripts. CNN reports:

In one instance, top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band lobbied Clinton aides for a job for someone else in the State Department. In the email, Band tells Hillary Clinton’s former aides at the department — Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin — that it is “important to take care of (redacted).” Band is reassured by Abedin that “Personnel has been sending him options.”

In a 2009 email, Band directs Abedin and Mills to put Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor, in contact with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon.

“We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Band wrote. “As you know, he’s a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”

“It’s jeff feltman,” Abedin responded, referring to Jeffrey Feltman, who was the US ambassador to Lebanon at the time. “I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff.”

In total, there were 44 e-mails in this release that had never been turned over to the State Department. Judicial Watch President Tom Filton said in a press release:

“No wonder Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin hid emails from the American people, the courts and Congress. They show the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law.”

The Clinton campaign responded by doing what it does best: deflect. Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin stated, ”Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the Foundation’s work. They are communications between her aides and the President’s personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the Secretary’s former staffers who was not employed by the Foundation.”

“The right-wing organization behind this lawsuit has been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s and no matter how this group tries to mischaracterize these documents, the fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as secretary of state because of donations to the Clinton Foundation,” he continued.

Scott Amey of Project on Government Oversight told CNN that the lines are quite blurred as to the level of criminality these e-mails reveal, but therein lies the problem. Even if no legal lines were crossed, he said, government employees have an obligation to avoid even the slightest appearance of a conflict of interest.

An impossible feat for the Clintons.