AP Photo Mills shared now-classified info with Clinton Foundation

Hillary Clinton’s No. 2 at the State Department twice forwarded information to the Clinton Foundation that was later deemed classified, the latest instance of former Clinton staff transmitting now-classified information.

According to a new email chain shared with POLITICO by Citizens United, Cheryl Mills — Clinton's former chief of state at State — forwarded State Department background information about Rwanda and the Congo to the Clintons' philanthropic organization. Citizens United, a conservative activist group, obtained the messages via a Freedom of Information act lawsuit.


Former President Bill Clinton was visiting Africa, including Rwanda, around the time that Mills sent the email, which was mostly redacted. Former president Clinton was also considering giving Rwandan President Paul Kagame a plenary role at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the emails.

“Fyi for [Bill] since he is in contact w/Kagame,” Mills wrote in an email chain dated July 28, 2012, forwarding to the foundation a message originally written to State employees under the subject “Developments in the Eastern Congo.”

“Thanks,” Ami Desai, the foundation's director of foreign policy, wrote back. “He has been talking about giving Kagame a plenary role at CGI.”

The information in the 2012 emails was classified by the State Department in July of this year because of national security and foreign policy reasons, according to the documents. The classification specifically related to foreign government information and intelligence activities, sources or methods, according to the redaction labels.

Mills’ lawyer Beth Wilkinson of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison did not respond to requests for comment. Previously, Mills' legal team has argued that she did nothing wrong because the messages were not marked classified when she had originally sent them.

Meanwhile, the FBI is currently investigating whether classified information was ever mishandled via Hillary Clinton's private email server. For months, Clinton maintained that she did not have classified information on her homemade email server, until government watchdogs unveiled that she did. After those reports, the campaign maintained that Clinton had not received messages that were "marked" classified at the time.

The State Department has agreed with that assessment, but the intelligence community inspector general does not and has argued many of the emails were indeed classified at the time in 2012.

Beyond the classification issue, Republicans and other transparency groups have questioned whether the foundation’s work, funded in part by foreign donors, ever influenced what happened at the State Department. Or if the foundation received preferential treatment.

Mills sat on the foundation’s board before becoming the department’s No. 2 official and returned to the board after leaving State in 2013. And she appeared to continue to advise the foundation while at State, according to other emails revealed by the Citizens United lawsuit. Republicans say those connections between Mills and the Clinton Foundation raise questions about whether the relationship was too close.

“The fact that these two email chains — which are now classified — were sent only 16 days apart, makes it appear as if the sharing of sensitive government information with the Clinton Foundation was a regular occurrence,” David Bossie, president of Citizens United, said in a statement. “Time will tell as more emails become public.”

The emails are just the latest in a series of communications by Clinton and top staff being publicly released due to ongoing lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act, which have forced the State Department to ask Clinton and her top brass to turn in email records from years before. The messages are just now becoming public.

The Washington Free Beacon last week reported the first instance of an email suggesting Mills shared now classified information. That email chain dated July 11, 2012 seems to be intended for Clinton specifically. Johnie Carson, an assistant secretary of state for the bureau of African affairs, asked Mills what she thought about them encouraging Bill Clinton to use his trip to Rwanda on July 18, 2012 to “in his private conversations with Kagame to quietly encourage him to defuse the tension with the DRC” and “terminate any [direct] or indirect to support to DRC.”

A chunk of the email about the situation in Rwanda is now classified.

Mills forwarded it to Ami: “See below and attacked points which I requested for WJC.”