Maybe more than at any point in her life, even during her 2008 bid for the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s past and associations are coming under intense scrutiny in mainstream press outlets. From her potentially unsecure, private email account to the Clinton Foundation’s suspect fundraising methods, Clinton’s past is apparently anything but unimpeachable. One positive thing you can say for sure about the secretary is that she takes care of her friends. Apparently, former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) wife and longtime Clinton confidant Huma Abedin was especially well cared for.

According to a New York Times investigation, Abedin was the beneficiary of a special arrangement in which she was allowed to consult outside of the State Department while she served as an agency employee. That practice is not prohibited, but State Department officers are required to disclose any income that they make while consulting outside the agency. Abedin, however, was not.

“Ms. Abedin did not disclose the arrangement — or how much income she earned — on her financial report,” The Times reported. “It requires officials to make public any significant sources of income. An adviser to Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said that Ms. Abedin was not obligated to do so.”

Ms. Abedin declined a request for an interview, but the picture that emerges from interviews and records suggests a situation where the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin’s work in the high echelons of one of the government’s most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider. While continuing her work at the State Department, in the latter half of 2012, she also worked for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm, which was founded by Doug Band, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. Teneo has advised corporate clients like Coca-Cola and MF Global, the collapsed brokerage firm run by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey. At the same time, Ms. Abedin served as a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and worked in a personal capacity for Mrs. Clinton as she prepared to transition out of her job as secretary of state.

All roads lead back to the Clinton Foundation.

In 2013, Politico revealed that Abedin had consulted with the Clinton-linked consulting firm Teneo while she served in an official capacity with the State Department, but the revelation regarding her unique disclosure requirements was previously unknown.

Along with other Clinton aides like 2008 campaign manager Maggie Williams, pollster Jeremy Rosner, speechwriter Jonathan Price, advisor Cheryl Mills, and Democratic operative Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Abedin was also allowed access to Clinton’s private email network.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting, the State Department’s information security specialists were concerned that the number of people accessing the secretary’s special “homebrew” server would be too much for it to handle.

When Mrs. Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, approached Mr. Clinton’s staff about piggybacking on the server, they were initially skeptical that it technically could handle the additional load. But requests from Mrs. Clinton were nothing they took lightly and they complied, people familiar with the matter said.

“She said in a letter to the State Department that the change was approved by State Department legal staff,” The Washington Post reported. “In the letter Abedin wrote to the State Department in 2013, she said her work at the consulting firm Teneo was unrelated to anything involving the department.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything untoward about Abedin’s special circumstances, but it’s easy to get the impression that virtually everyone associated with Clinton, including the secretary herself, had some form of special dispensation made. It is no wonder then that America is witness to Clinton’s display of contempt for the public’s galling effrontery as so many dare to question her privileges.