FBI twist in email investigation means the trusted adviser has seen her role switched from loyal servant to number one threat to a Clinton presidency

For an individual who has been described as mysterious, secretive and opaque, the blazing spotlight under which Huma Abedin now finds herself must be a deeply uncomfortable place. For 20 years she has built a career out of being Hillary Clinton’s shadow, the trusted adviser and friend whose influence may be ubiquitous but is wielded firmly behind the scenes.



Now Abedin, 40, finds herself front and center in one of the strangest and most contentious presidential elections in US history. As FBI agents begin to pore over thousands of emails that were reportedly found on a laptop she apparently shared with her estranged husband, the sexting former congressman Anthony Weiner, her role has suddenly switched from that of Clinton’s loyal servant to number one threat to the Democratic nominee’s hopes of winning the presidency.

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Scant information has emerged since the FBI director, James Comey, dropped his bombshell about a fresh batch of emails that could be pertinent to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server while she was US secretary of state. Up to 650,000 emails were reportedly found on the shared Abedin-Weiner laptop, among them several thousand that might have passed between her and her boss, raising renewed questions about potential breaches of security protocol.

The explosive announcement landed at a supremely bad time for both women. For Clinton, it has shaken what looked to be a smooth final sprint to victory in next Tuesday’s presidential election; for Abedin it has put a question mark over what was widely expected to be a senior role – some have even speculated chief of staff – in a Hillary Clinton White House.





“It would be a distraction were she to be given a prominent position such as chief of staff, forcing the new administration on to the defensive,” said Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers University. “It could derail any attempt to initiate many of the proposals Clinton has talked about.”

This is far from the first time that the Clinton-Abedin bond has been tested by a scandal engulfing the rambunctious and troubled Weiner. In 2011, when Abedin was five months pregnant and working as deputy chief of staff in Clinton’s state department, her husband was forced to stand down from his congressional seat after he inadvertently tweeted a lewd photograph intended for a woman in Seattle to his 45,000 followers.

Two years later, when he attempted a comeback run for New York mayor, he was struck low again when his digital dealings with a woman calling herself Sydney Leathers were exposed. Then this summer Weiner was revealed to have had an online relationship with an allegedly underage girl, leading to the announcement of Abedin’s legal separation from him in August, and in time to the current FBI investigation into his and Abedin’s emails.

Through the thick of all this, Clinton has stood by her woman. It may have had something to do with their shared experience of marital pain: Abedin first started as an intern in “Hillaryland”, as the then first lady’s coterie was called in the East Wing, in 1996, two years before President Bill Clinton was impeached for his liaison with a West Wing intern.

Or it may be that the two women have simply grown inseparable with the passing of the years, to the extent that Abedin has variously been dubbed “mini Hillary”, Clinton’s “second daughter” and her “younger sister”. From that modest beginning as a 19-year-old intern, Abedin has risen from “body woman” – a glorified maid – through travelling chief of staff during Clinton’s first run at the presidency in 2008, to the state department position and now vice-chair of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The union is so close that Abedin is said to carry Clinton’s cellphone in her bag, prompting Bill Clinton to complain that even he can’t get past the gatekeeper.

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“Over the years, we’ve shared stories about our lives, we’ve shared more meals than I can count, we’ve celebrated together, we’ve mourned together,” Abedin told Vogue earlier this year.

What’s different about the current crisis is that though its root may have been Weiner – yet again – its danger stems directly from Abedin’s own conduct rather than indirectly in her role as wronged wife. Though it remains unclear exactly what, if any, transgressions might be revealed by the latest FBI investigation, her position is complicated by the fact that in June she swore under oath that she had already handed over all devices on which she may have had state department emails – a deposition in which she appears to have forgotten to have mentioned the shared laptop.

So far there is no sign of Clinton turning against her faithful adviser, with John Podesta, chair of the presidential campaign, stating: “We fully stand behind her.” But with Fox News invoking the word perjury, a new rightwing conspiracy appears to be well under construction.

Could this be one wrench too far for the Clinton-Abedin partnership? “Despite the closeness of the two women,” Baker said, “there’s an agreement among political people that even friendship must give way to necessity – and no one understands that better than Hillary Clinton.”