The GOP senator writes to Kerry demanding more information on Abedin’s work arrangement at State.
AB Wire
WASHINGTON, DC: Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are getting a fair idea about how their lives would be should the former secretary of state win the presidency next year and Congress remain under the Republican control.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote letters to Secretary of State John Kerry and the Office of Inspector General on Friday seeking more information after an internal State probe found that Abedin was overpaid by nearly $10,000 during Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom. The letters were obtained by the Washington Post.
In a separate letter emailed to Abedin, through her lawyers — which is also posted on the Post website — Grassley wrote that his committee had sent a letter to the State Department “relating to the circumstances of your work arrangement, time and attendance while employed by the Department potential conflicts of interest raised by your outside employment and conversion from a full-time Department of State employee to a Special Government Employee (SGE) and Senior Advisor to former Secretary Clinton.”
Grassley’s letter to Abedin says that the Office of Inspector General “had found at least a reasonable suspicion of a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 641, theft of public money through time and attendance fraud” and another law “related to conflicts of interest connected to your overlapping employment as an SGE and her [sic] employment at Teneo and at the Clinton Foundation.”
The Post said the Clinton campaign refused to comment but Abedin’s lawyers rejected the charges:
Attorneys for Abedin said she learned in May that the State Department’s inspector general had concluded that she improperly collected $9,857 for periods when she was on vacation or leave.
Abedin responded with a 12-page letter contesting the findings and formally requesting an administrative review of the investigation’s conclusion, a process that remains ongoing.
Her attorneys say the conclusion that Abedin was overpaid relied on a finding that she had done no work while on the Italy trip and in the weeks after she gave birth in December 2011. However, they wrote that the evidence uncovered by the inspector general made it clear that she had worked extensively during those times.
The newspaper writes that the controversy “could prove damaging to Clinton’s candidacy, as Republicans charge that government rules were routinely bent to benefit Clinton and her aides,” but:
At the same time, the letters, which for the first time have publicized an internal pay dispute that has been simmering for months, could bolster Democratic claims that congressional Republicans are using their oversight role to hurt Clinton politically.
Abedin, an Indian American, is one of Clinton’s most trusted advisors. She is a vice chair of the former first lady’s presidential campaign.
During the entire Clinton presidency in the 1990s, the president and the first lady were targets of a number of investigations by the Republican Congress, which led to Bill Clinton’s December 1998 impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.