Hillary and the mystery of the vanishing woman who decided which of her emails were to be erased: Key aide has not taken up expected campaign role
- Heather Samuelson was tasked with going through Hillary Clinton's emails and decided which should be made public and which deleted
- Samuelson was supposed to take a job at the campaign and even relocated to New York, but things got 'complicated'
- Her role in the ongoing email scandal is being scrutinized by Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley who wants to know if she had an appropriate security clearance
- More news on Hillary Clinton's campaign at www.dailymail.co.uk/hillary
Heather
Samuelson was the Clinton aide who was tasked to go through the former
secretary of state's emails and then, later on, was to take a job with
the 2016 campaign.
But, according to Politico,
Samuelson made the move – from Washington, D.C. to New York, as
Clinton's campaign is headquartered in Brooklyn – but never started her
campaign job.
'She
moved to Brooklyn to work on the campaign, but then things got really
complicated,' a friend of Samuelson's told Politico, asking to not be
named.
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Heather
Samuelson (left) was tasked with sifting through Hillary Clinton's
(right) emails and then was supposed to take a job at the campaign, but,
according to Politico, things got 'complicated'
Hillary Clinton's email scandal has
gotten the attention of Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley who's
aimed his ire at Heather Samuelson, an aide who sorted through Clinton's
emails, and Huma Abedin
According to Politico, Samuelson was supposed to work for the campaign and vet senior level hires.
Samuelson
did appear among the staffers that accompanied Clinton to her 11-hour
testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
'Heather
Samuelson has been and is one of former Secretary Clinton's personal
attorneys,' Clinton attorney David Kendall told DailyMail.com
He wouldn't expand his comments beyond that and wouldn't say whether Samuelson was technically working for the campaign.
Before
the New York City move, Samuelson had been a 2008 campaign staffer
before becoming a senior adviser to Clinton at the State Department.
She was the person assigned to screen Clinton's emails and decide which ones should be handed over to the government.
Her
role in the ongoing Clinton email scandal is once again being
highlighted because Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa,
sent her a letter last Wednesday asking about her security clearance.
'It
is not clear what level of security clearance you had at the different
stages of this process, if any,' Grassley wrote, referring to the email
sorting.
The
Iowa senator mentioned how the FBI took the emails out of the hands of
Clinton's attorney Kendall, who had a Top Secret clearance issued
through the State Department, because even that level was 'insufficient
to allow him to maintain custody of the emails,' Grassley explained.
Sen. Chuck
Grassley (left) has been looking into Clinton aides including Huma
Abedin (right) who had a 'special government status' that allowed her to
work both inside and outside of the State Department, which Grassley is
calling a conflict of interest
Using
this same line of thinking, Grassley wrote, 'it is imperative to
confirm when, how, and why you, and any of your associates, received a
security clearance in connection with your work on behalf of Secretary
Clinton and whether it was active while you had custody of Secretary
Clinton's emails.'
Grassley
said it was 'imperative' to understand Samuelson's background as she
was the chief decider on which emails became public record and which
were considered personal to the secretary and deleted.
Attached
to the letter, Grassley included 19 numbered questions, some with
multiple parts, that he wanted answered for the judiciary committee,
giving Samuelson a deadline of Dec. 1.
So far, there's been no indication by the committee that she's replied.
Grassley has been sniffing around Clintonland for quite some time now.
Also
in his crosshairs, since 2013, has been top Clinton aide Huma Abedin,
the wife of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, whose 'special
government employee' status allowed her to simultaneously keep working
at the State Department, while also taking a paycheck from Teneo, a
corporate advisory firm linked to the Clintons.
This arrangement also allowed Abedin to do work for the Clinton Foundation.
Grassley
considered this to be a conflict of interest, while Abedin's lawyer and
the Clinton camp have pushed back and said she did nothing wrong, as
these arrangements are fairly typical.
Democrats,
and Clinton-aligned groups like Correct the Record, have criticized
Grassley more broadly as well, suggesting that his investigations are
deeply partisan and part of the Republican plan to derail the former
secretary of state's White House ambitions.
They
point to a former Grassley aide, Emilia DiSanto, who now works for the
State Department, suggesting that she's been leaking information to her
former boss so that he can go after Clinton's people.
'You
know the saying, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck,
then it's a duck,' said Correct the Record head Brad Woodhouse to the Hill newspaper.
'We believe she's passing along information to Grassley to hurt Huma ..
and to hurt Secretary Clinton. Would [Grassley] be interested in this
issue if Hillary Clinton wasn't running for president?'
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid also blasted his colleague on the Senate floor over the investigations of Clinton.
'How
much taxpayer money is Sen. Grassley wasting on this anti-Hillary
Clinton campaign?' Reid said. 'He should be willing to tell us about his
committee resources that are being used to investigate Hillary
Clinton.'
For
a time, Grassley was holding up a number of State Department
nominations too, but on that he's relaxed, now just holding onto three
senior positions, as he waits for more questions about the Clinton
emails to be answered.
It's incredible that Heather Samuelson is still missing in the news since last November.
ReplyDeleteIt's incredible that Heather Samuelson is still missing in the news since last November.
ReplyDeleteThe mysterious missing persons in the lives of Bill and Hillary.
ReplyDelete