Judicial Watch: New Emails Reveal State Department Photo Session with Clinton for ‘Primary Sponsors’ of Clinton Global Initiative

Records Also Reveal that Clinton/Abedin Accessed Classified Information Concerning Afghanistan through Unsecured Server

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 207 pages of new Department of State documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin worked with top Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) executives to set up group photo sessions for Clinton with “primary sponsors” of CGI and members of the CGI staff. CGI is a project of the Clinton Foundation.

The new records also reveal that Abedin sent classified information concerning “foreign relations or foreign activities of the U.S., including confidential sources,” about Afghanistan to her own unsecured email address. Also included are more instances of the State Department doing special favors for high-dollar Clinton Foundation donors and the distribution of Clinton’s government schedule to members of the Clinton Foundation staff.

The new documents contained seven Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date of such emails uncovered by Judicial Watch to 235 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

The records include a request for a group photo session with CGI “primary donors” just prior to a speech on September 25, 2009, given by then-Secretary of State Clinton to the group:

From: Fred Poust [former chief marketing officer, CGI] To: Mary Morrison [then-CGI Director of Operations] Cc: Annie Weir [former deputy finance director, Hillary Clinton for President]; Katie Miller; Kelsey Nasworthy [then-CGI sponsorship coordinator] Sent: Thu Sep 24 [4:41:11 p.m.] 2009 Subject: HRC Photo Just let us know when you get a sense of where, when, how many we can intie [sic] for hrc photos. [Redacted] We’ll then send it all out to sponsors. Know you’re jammed and you’ll let us know when u know Thx Fred From: Mary Morrison To: Doug Band [Clinton advisor, founding partner and president of Teneo Holdings] Sent: Thu Sept 24 [5:26:07 p.m.] 2009 Subject: Fw: HRC Photo When and where do you want to do this? From: Doug Band To: mary.morrison; Huma Abedin Sent: Thu Sep 24 [5:41:13 p.m.] 2009 Subject: Re: HRC Photo Up to huma From: Huma Abedin [email protected] To: Doug Band-PC; Mary Morrison, [email protected] [Clinton’s scheduler] Sent: Thu Sep 24 [6:14:30 p.m.] 2009 Subject: Re: HRC Photo Mary, we are happy to do anything you want for staff. Adding lona who’s managing all the other pullasides for hrc. But again, we can do several photos and wherever you think makes sense. *** From: Mary Morrison Sent: Thu Sep 24, 2009 11:23 PM To: [email protected]; Doug Band-PC; Valmoro, Lona J Cc: Fred Poust; Annie Weir Subject: Re: HRC Photo Thank you Huma. We do want to do a photo with our primary sponsors – about 20 of them. What is best quick photo line? What time would work best for you guys? Let me know Thanks From: Doug Band Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:25:00 PM To: mary.morrison; Huma Abedin; [email protected] CC: fred.pous; annie.weir Subject: RE: HRC Photo And one staff picture with cgi staff pls

In 2009, CGI annual meeting primary sponsors included:

Tom Golisano; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Laureate International Universities; P&G; Victor Pinchuk Foundation; Grupo ABC; Shangri La Industries; Booz Allen Hamilton; Cisco; Duke Energy; ExxonMobil; Hewlett-Packard Company; Standard Chartered; Swiss Re; Goldman Sachs; The Rockefeller Foundation; CLSA (Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia); Crédit Agricole; The EKTA Foundation; The Economist; Dell; Deutsche Bank; Microsoft; Inter-American Development Bank; Visa; APCO Worldwide; Diageo; Knoll; and PR Newswire.

The new documents include a September 13, 2009 email concerning Afghanistan which is almost completely redacted by the State Department because it contains classified information:

From: Slaughter, Anne-Marie To: Mills, Cheryl D; Sullivan, Jacob J Cc: [Among others] Abedin, Huma Sent: Sat Sep 12 [9:23:05 p.m.] 2009 Subject: For S – for discussion of Afghanistan tomorrow I had a long talk with [Redacted due to information “kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy”] From: H [[email protected]] Sent: Sun September 13, 2009 7:21:09 AM To: cheryl.mills [Redacted]; [email protected]; Huma Abedin Subject: Afghanistan Anne-Marie [Slaughter, State Department director of policy planning] sent me a memo yesterday about her conversation w Sarah Chayes [author, former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff] but when it was sent to Huma for printing it did not completely print but cut off after the first intro para. Can someone resend directly to me? From: Abedin, Huma Abe[email protected] Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 8:06 AM To: humamabedin [Redacted] Subject: printFw: For S – for discussion on Afghanistan tomorrow From: Huma Abedin [[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 8:06:50 AM To: H; cheryl.mills [Redacted]; [email protected] Subject: Re: Afghanistan Ill [sic] do so now.

The emails also show that Abedin sent Clinton’s government schedule through her unsecured non-State.gov email on September 8, 2009 and again on September 14 and included among the recipients members of the Clinton Foundation staff.

The newly obtained emails also include two instances of Clinton Foundation high-dollar donors seeking and/or receiving special favors from the Clinton State Department. On September 24, 2009, Ben Ringel (a $10,000 and $25,000 Clinton Foundation donor) sent Abedin a message seeking United States Agency for International Development (USAID) grant money for a hospital in Israel and saying, “This is urgent… When u get back to the office we need to get the money to them.”

On September 20, 2009, Clinton sent an email to Abedin concerning Elaine Schuster, saying, “If she can, she should attend the POTUS [UN] speech on Wed am where she would sit w me as a member of the six-member US delegation.” The Washington Post found that, as of last year, 2,700 loyal supporters “have donated more than $129 million for [the Clinton’s] political races and legal needs…. Among them are Elaine and Gerald Schuster, who made his fortune operating nursing homes and public housing developments … Together, the Boston-based couple have given 53 separate donations to support the Clintons since 1992, including $276,100 for their races and more than $500,000 to their foundation.”

Other emails show that Clinton chief of staff and other Clinton staff purposely kept initial planning for a State Department Clinton video project out of the State Department email records system.

This is the twelfth set of records produced for Judicial Watch by the State Department from the non-state.gov email accounts of Huma Abedin. The documents were produced under a court order in a May 5, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the State Department requiring the agency to produce “all emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013, using a ‘non-state’.gov email address” (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)). Previous records releases documented special Clinton State Department consideration for Clinton Foundation supporters (see here, here, and here.)

“These new emails show the dangerous mishandling of classified material about Afghanistan by Hillary Clinton and her aides,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And the emails are further proof that Hillary Clinton used her office to provide special treatment – even photo ops – for donors to the Clinton Foundation. No wonder it has taken years and more than one federal lawsuit to force Huma Abedin and the Obama State Department to release these emails.”

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