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Newly released emails raise questions about relationship between State Dept and Clinton Foundation

Sonam Sheth   

Newly released emails raise questions about relationship between State Dept and Clinton Foundation
Politics3 min read

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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch released an additional 296 pages of e-mails from Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, including 44 that it said were not previously disclosed to the State Department by the former secretary of state.

Among the released e-mails were some that raised questions about the relationship between the Clinton Foundation and State Department.

In one exchange, Clinton Foundation official Doug Band asked Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills about a job for an employee at the State Department, noting "it is important to take care of (redacted)." Abedin replied, "Personnel has been sending him options."

In another 2009 e-mail, Band told Abedin and Mills to place Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire and Clinton Foundation donor, in contact with the State Department's "substance person" on Lebanon.

"We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon," Band wrote. "As you know, he's a key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp."

The Trump campaign immediately seized on the newly released e-mails to cast Clinton as corrupt, unreliable, and a risk to national security.

On Tuesday, he tweeted, "When is the media going to talk about Hillary's policies that have gotten people killed, like Libya, open borders, and maybe her emails?"

 "This is yet more evidence that Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, character, stability and temperament to be within 1,000 miles of public power," Stephen Miller, Trump's national policy director, told CNN. "She views public office as nothing more than a means to personal enrichment -- and every dollar she takes comes at the expense of the public welfare."

Miller added: "This latest finding is an unseemly, disturbing window into a corrupt office, and yet more evidence that Hillary Clinton has been lying from the beginning -- and by any reasonable definition attempted to obstruct the investigation of the FBI."

Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, echoed Miller in a statement of his own.

"No wonder Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin hid emails from the American people, the courts and Congress," Fitton said. "The show the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law."

The Justice Department did not press charges against Clinton for her handling of classified information, and FBI Director James Comey said that while the Secretary was "extremely careless" with her use of private e-mail to conduct government business, he believed "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

Clinton has faced enduring doubts about her trustworthiness and honesty throughout the entirety of the presidential campaign. Immediately following Comey's recommendation not to press charges for her use of a private e-mail server, 67 percent of voters believed Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, and only 28 percent viewed her as honest. 46 percent of voters believed she acted illegally regarding her e-mail use, and most believed she did something wrong by setting up a private server during her time as Secretary of State.  

The Clinton campaign asserted that none of the most recently released e-mails relate to her work at the Clinton Foundation.

"Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the Foundation's work," said Josh Schwerin, Clinton campaign spokesman, in an e-mailed statement to CNN. "The are communications between her aides and the President's personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the Secretary's former staffers who was not employed by the Foundation."

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