Emails Show Clinton Foundation Employee Asking For 'A Favor' From State Department Aide
WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The State Department has turned over 44 previously-unreleased Hillary Clinton email exchanges that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to include among the 30,000 private messages she turned over to the government last year. They show her interacting with lobbyists, political and Clinton Foundation donors and business interests as secretary of state.
The conservative legal group Judicial Watch obtained the emails as part of its lawsuit against the State Department. They cover Clinton's first three months as secretary of state in early 2009, a period for which Clinton did not turn over any emails to the State Department last year. The government found the newly disclosed messages during a search of agency computer files from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
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According to CBS News, there were several exchanges between Abedin and a top Clinton Foundation worker.
In emails from April 2009, Doug Band, who worked at the foundation and served as an aide to former President Bill Clinton, contacted Abedin and Cheryl Mills, Clinton's chief of staff, for "a favor" on behalf of a foundation associate.
Band said that it was "important to take care of [redacted]." Abedin responded, "We have all had him on our radar" and that "Personnel has been sending him options."
In another email batch, Band asked Abedin and Mills for the State Department's "substance person" in Lebanon to contact Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire philanthropist and a top donor for the Clinton Foundation.
"As you know, he's key guy there and to us and is loved in lebanon," Band emailed, adding that it was very important.
Abedin said the "substance person" was Jeff Feltman, the former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon. Band then told Abedin: "Better if you call" Chagoury and "now preferable."
In another instance, Clinton exchanged messages with a senior Morgan Stanley investment executive whom she met with later that year at her office in Washington. They were among 246 pages of Abedin messages turned over to Judicial Watch.
Clinton campaign officials did not immediately answer questions about the issue.
On Wednesday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump accused Clinton of "pay for play," claiming her behavior was illegal while in charge of the State Department.
Trump said it showed that under Clinton, "you pay, and you're getting things." He said it's "really, really bad" and compared Clinton to disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was imprisoned for corruption.
The emails are separate from a larger batch of several thousand work-related emails that FBI officials recovered from Clinton's private server. Clinton's legal team turned over more than 30,000 emails from her server to the State Department last March but only after deleting another 30,000 messages that Clinton's team deemed private and personal. The FBI plans to turn over the reconstructed Clinton emails to the State Department for public release.
The new Clinton emails include a February 2009 message to her from Stephen Roach, then-chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, saying he planned to testify to Congress that week and was "happy to help in any way I can." Roach later met with Clinton over the summer for 30 minutes, according to Clinton calendars obtained by The Associated Press.
In another email, Mills informed her that National Security Agency and State Department officials discussed an attempt to develop a modified blackberry for Clinton that might be used when she worked in a restricted State Department office that did not allow private phones.
Clinton called the development "good news," but she continued using a private Blackberry tied to her private server.
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