Huma & Hillary (Confilcts / Stonewall)

Hillary, Huma 'Stonewall' Senate Inquiry Into Conflicts

Posted 07/31/2013 06:54 PM ET

Graft: The relationship between the Clintons and the wife of embattled Anthony Weiner grows curiouser and curiouser. Forget sexting; this may be the real scandal. And one senator sees a possible criminal element to it.

Republican Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is demanding documents from the State Department shedding more light on the private consulting work that Huma Abedin, aka Mrs. Weiner, performed while working for the government, where she had access to top secret information.

Abedin served as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff, where she earned $135,000 a year. But it turns out she at the same time worked as a consultant to the Clinton Foundation and a New York advisory firm closely tied to the Clintons, one that happens to do business before the government.

Abedin reportedly hauled in as much as $355,000 in consulting contracts while on the government payroll. What she did for that dough is unclear. "The State Department and Ms. Abedin haven't provided a single document that I requested," Grassley said. "Putting up a stone wall raises a lot more questions."

While Hillary's old department stonewalls Grassley's document requests, her close aide Abedin is suddenly taking leave from her current job as head of her transition office, where by all accounts Hillary is preparing a 2016 run at the White House.

Their sudden separation likely has more to do with Grassley's inquiry than Weiner's perversions.

Grassley suspects Abedin was trafficking in political intelligence while employed at State. He says it appears the Clinton consulting shop — Teneo Holdings — was "compensating Ms. Abedin for gathering information from government sources for purpose of informing investment decisions," a potentially serious conflict.

Teneo's Wall Street clients have included MF Global, as it was collapsing. It also represents foreign governments.
Teneo, which maintains offices in Dubai and Beijing, was founded in 2011 by former State Department official and Hillary 2008 fundraiser Declan Kelly, as well as former Clinton aide Douglas Band and Paul Keary, former senior managing director of FTI Consulting, a global consulting firm specializing in China.

FTI's man in Washington, Jackson Dunn, served as an aide to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as to former Sen. John Kerry, who succeeded Hillary at State. Teneo's "intelligence CEO" is James Shinn, a former Pentagon official focused on China.

Band worked in the White House for Bill Clinton, who happens to be a well-paid adviser to Teneo. Band, who now also works in Clinton's Harlem office and for the Clinton Foundation, is the former president's right-hand man.

Grassley wants to know what, if any, business Teneo was doing before State while it was paying Abedin. He's asked for a record of communications between Teneo and its clients and the department. He also wants to know if Hillary signed off on her outside consulting. So far, he's been stiffed.

He'd also like to know why Abedin suddenly changed her employment status to "special government employee" in June 2012, which allowed her to leave Washington and work from New York.

That same month, Abedin made headlines when several members of Congress sent a letter to State demanding more information about her family connections to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. While Abedin was advising Clinton, State abandoned its prior policy against official dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere.

What other consulting contracts and contacts did Abedin maintain while at State, before June 2012? Grassley has asked for all the private contracts she signed while taxpayers thought they were paying her for full-time government work. But Abedin won't turn over any of them.

If there was nothing improper going on, why all the stonewalling?

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