Hillary Clinton’s email woes just refuse to go away. On Tuesday, a conservative watchdog group obtained and released 296 pages of the Democratic presidential nominee that have raised new questions about the influence that her husband’s Clinton Foundation had on the State Department when she was Secretary of State.
The group, Judicial Watch, which obtained the emails from the State Department through a lawsuit it had filed under the Freedom of Information Act, said the released documents, many of them heavily redacted, include 44 emails that Clinton had not previously handed over to the department.
“No wonder Hillary Clinton and (her aide) Huma Abedin hid emails from the American people, the courts and Congress,” said Judicial Watch President tom Fitton in a press release. “They show the Clinton Foundation, Clinton donors, and operatives worked with Hillary Clinton in potential violation of the law.”
The Clinton campaign, however, maintained that the emails in question didn’t relate to her work at the Clinton Foundation. “They 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,” Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said.
The Trump campaign promptly seized on the newly-released emails, terming it “yet more evidence that Hillary Clinton lacks the judgement, character, stability and temperament to be within 1,000 miles of public power”.
Trump himself tweeted later: “When is the media going to talk about Hillary’s policies that have gotten people killed, like libya, open borders, and maybe her emailsIJ”
The New York Times reported that the documents did raise new questions on whether the Clinton Foundation worked to reward its donors with access and influence at the State Department.
“In one email exchange, for instance, an executive at the Clinton Foundation in 2009 sought to put a billionaire donor in touch with the United States ambassador to lebanon because of the donor’s interests there. In another email, the foundation appeared to push aides to Clinton to help find a job for a foundation associate. Her aides indicated that the department was working on the request,” the paper reported.
It quoted the Judicial Watch president as saying in an interview that the State Department and the Clinton Foundation “worked hand in hand in terms of policy and donor effort”, adding: “There was no daylight between the two under Mrs. Clinton, and this was contrary to her promises.”