Evan Vitale Consulting: Emails show Huma Abedin's ties to private consulting firm

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By Rachael Bade

09/23/15, 01:01 PM EDT

Updated 09/23/15, 05:36 PM EDT

A spring 2012 email to Hillary Clinton’s top State Department aide, Huma Abedin, asked for help winning a presidential appointment for a supporter of the Clinton Foundation, according to a chain obtained by POLITICO.

The messages illustrate the relationship between Clinton’s most trusted confidant and the private consulting company that asked for the favor, Teneo — a global firm that later hired Abedin. Abedin signed on with the company while she still held a State Department position, a dual employment that is now being examined by congressional investigators.

Abedin’s status as a “special government employee” has been questioned by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has raised concerns about any overlapping duties and whether they posed potential conflicts of interest. Abedin also worked as an adviser to the Clinton Foundation, the private charity founded by former President Bill Clinton.

Abedin’s legal team maintains that the part-time jobs were appropriate and approved by Abedin’s supervisors at State and that she did nothing wrong. Indeed, in the email request obtained by POLITICO, there is no evidence that Abedin interceded on behalf of Teneo as it sought a new appointment for Judith Rodin, a Teneo client and president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Rodin, a former White House appointee to the White House Council for Community Solutions, did not get the appointment Teneo was seeking. The Foundation paid Teneo $5.7 million in 2012 to do public relations work, but no longer works with the firm.

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The Clinton campaign, which Abedin now leads as vice chairwoman, said in a statement that release of the email chain was a “shameful” attempt to smear Clinton’s top staffer.

“This email — from before Huma Abedin was an SGE — is yet another attempt to smear a hardworking public servant in the press through ill-informed partisan leaks, as demonstrated by the fact that this email is marked as ‘Produced to Senate Judiciary Committee Only. Not for Public Release,’” said Hillary for America spokesman Nick Merrill in an email.

Grassley contends that the emails suggest a blurred line between a private firm and government work.

“This is a troubling example of Teneo and the Clinton Foundation seeking State Department help for a Teneo client and Clinton Foundation supporter,” Grassley said in a statement. “It raises serious questions. … Was anyone vetting the potential conflicts of interest? Were there other requests like this, and if so, how were they handled? The State Department ought to release the rest of any such emails in the interest of good government and transparency.”

The newly disclosed email chain comes a day after Bloomberg first reported that the FBI can recover all of Clinton’s emails on her homemade server, where Abedin also had an email account that she used for some State Department work.

The emails scandal has thrown a wrench into Clinton’s campaign, and Abedin, a longtime aide, has been caught up in the controversy.

News broke days ago that State Department inspector generally had opened a “criminal investigation” into alleged overpayments made to Abedin at State. The Justice Department failed to take up the case, which is now being handled administratively. Abedin’s lawyers say the IG’s findings were unfair, and they are disputing a State Department billing to cover the questioned salary.

The emails obtained by POLITICO show that before Abedin signed on with the consulting firm, Teneo turned to her for help due to her close proximity to Secretary Clinton.

In the April 10, 2012 exchange, Teneo president Doug Band — a close confidante of Bill Clinton — asked Abedin to help him get Rodin nominated to the President’s Global Development Council, an unpaid post.

The Rockefeller Foundation at the time was both a Teneo client and Clinton Foundation donor — and Band made that point in his email to Abedin.

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The email subject line read: “She is expecting us to help her get appointed to this.”

“Judy rodin,” he wrote to Abedin in the shorthand email. “Huge foundation/cgi supporter and close pal of wjc[.] Teneo reps her as well[.] Can you help?”

“Wjc” is often used as shorthand for Bill Clinton. And “foundation,” likely means Clinton Foundation.

Teneo did not returned request for comment on this story.

The position in question was technically under U.S. Agency for International Development’s jurisdiction, but State was also involved, according to the Teneo employees discussing the appointment.

A spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation said Rodin and staff “followed standard procedures in applying for this unpaid position – an application was submitted through the White House’s official online portal which detailed the Foundation’s interest in joining the Council and Dr. Rodin’s credentials.”

“At the time, Teneo was acting as the Rockefeller Foundation’s public relations consultant, and the Foundation staff informed Teneo of Dr. Rodin’s application and interest,” the statement reads.

In the message to Abedin, Band forwarded along the full conversation, whereby multiple Teneo employees openly discussed who in power they could contact to help get their client Rodin assigned to the new post.

“Could someone from [Sen. Chuck] Schumer’s office place a call to the WH?” Orson Porter, senior vice president of Teneo, asked Tom Shea, the managing director.

“Doug is willing to push with Valerie or HRC, but I can’t find out who the decision maker is,” Shea replied, perhaps referring to Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama.

Eventually Porter sent the email up the chain to Band.

“Hey brother — it’s been a lift in the [W]hite [H]ouse,” he wrote to Band. “She is not on anyone’s friend list — VJ’s office promised to send it up the flag pole, but they will need to hear from someone outside of us — I keep pushing Tom to have a congressional office send a note. Do you think Bruce Reed would be helpful?”

Reed was Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff.

Porter, in another message a few minutes later, told Band “a [H]uma call to USAID would be helpful.”

Band forwarded that to Abedin with his short note.

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More than a month later, Teneo checked up on their request. Forwarding the entire conversation again to Band, Orson wrote on May 22: “DB, I haven’t heard anything from the WH on this appointment (Judy R_. Did you have any luck with the State Department?”

Band again forwarded that to Abedin, who two days later sent the message to her Clinton email.

It’s unclear exactly when Abedin started working for Teneo, a firm tailored toward advising CEOs of Fortune 100 companies on government affairs, business intelligence, management, public relations and financial issues, according to its website. She became an SGE in June 2012.

Other signs of Abedin’s relationship with Teneo surfaced in recent court filings that detailed documents the State Department declined to turn over to the conservative group Citizens United in a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

The filing says Abedin had an exchange with Ken Miller, a senior advisor with Teneo Holdings, to arrange “a time to discuss Doug Band and Teneo” sometime in early July 2012. .

Other withheld records suggest Abedin, State officials and Teneo CEO Declan Kelly, a former Clinton state appointee, were arranging “dinner with Secretary Clinton during her visit to Dublin, Ireland” in December of 2012.

Clinton was in Ireland on official business at the time, meeting Irish leaders. Declan had been appointed Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland by Clinton in the fall of 2009, though that was before he helped found Teneo.

Ken Vogel contributed to this report.

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