Subject: Hillary Clinton 2016: Chuck Grassley aims new probe - POLITICO
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2015 18:46:20 -0400

Hillary Clinton 2016: Chuck Grassley aims new probe - POLITICO

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/sen-chuck-grassley-takes-aim-at-clinton-with-new-probe-121037.html#ixzz3hy2JsH4h

Sen. Chuck Grassley takes aim at Hillary Clinton with new probe

Move over, Trey Gowdy.

A top Senate Republican is turning his committee’s spotlight on Hillary
Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, as the controversy over Benghazi
grows to include broader questions over document security and issues with
her staff — and he’s ready to play hardball.

Story Continued Below

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is going to place a hold on a
pending State Department nominee until he gets answers from State about a
number of issues that have the potential to embarrass the 2016 Democratic
front-runner, POLITICO has learned.

And he’s threatening to use tougher tactics if he doesn’t get a response.

The Iowa Republican in a yet-to-be-released statement obtained by POLITICO
said he’s planning to hold up David Malcolm Robinson, nominated to be
assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations and
coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, until the State gives his
investigators more information about the email practices of Clinton and her
top brass that “may be in violation of department policy and federal law.”

After probing the issue for years, but apparently not receiving the
information he’s been seeking, Grassley is also demanding more details
about the special work status of top Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, who
has been alleged to have a “potential conflict of interest” working for the
private sector while she was also serving then-Secretary of State Clinton
and who was recently found by a State watchdog to have wrongly received
reimbursement for $10,000 of unused leave time. Abedin contests both
accounts.

Grassley will block the nominee “because the State Department has engaged
in unreasonable delay in responding to Judiciary Committee investigations
and inquiries,” he said in the statement, noting that his Abedin probe goes
back to June 2013. “To this day, the Committee has not received a complete
response. Moreover, the Committee recently acquired information that shows
the State Department has been in possession of material that would answer
some of the Committee’s inquiries. Yet, the requested material is still not
forthcoming.”

Grassley accused the department of a “willful lack of cooperation.”

“The State Department apparently believes that it can simply ignore
Congress,” he said, adding that the department has “failed” to confirm via
email or phone call that it has received the panel’s inquiries “despite
three emails sent by Committee staff,” he continued.

A State Department official told POLITICO in an email that the department
“will be providing information to Senator Grassley in response to this
request in the very near future.”

Grassley’s demands come a few days after he sent a letter pushing the FBI
to probe Clinton’s use of a home email system, which allegedly kept
classified intelligence on an unsecured network. He also asked them to
confirm the security of a thumb drive kept by Clinton’s lawyer that has
copies of all her emails, including some likely classified material.

And he’s seeing results: The Washington Post on Tuesday night first
reported that the FBI has started investigating both issues.

“She wasn’t supposed to use her private email in the first place — that’s
an issue,” Grassley said in a brief interview about his inquiry. “The
second issue is, she said that there wasn’t any classified material on her
email — and there was. So it’s a case of credibility, you know?”

Grassley has a long record of dogged oversight of the executive branch,
firing off letters to departments and agencies on matters large and small.

Meanwhile, House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.)
has said he has no interest in expanding his probe to include the various
other issues that have sprung up during his investigation of the 2012
Benghazi terrorist attacks, such as findings that Clinton may have had
classified information on her unsecured network.

House committees with jurisdiction on these issues have been told to stand
down on probing the matters so as to not interfere with Gowdy’s work.

But across the Hill campus, Grassley is becoming increasingly vocal, and
he’s been hounding State and haunting Clinton’s camp.

“Gowdy’s committee is going to get in deeper … We’re just trying to see if
the FBI is doing its job,” Grassley said of his inquiries. “They won’t be
interested in it if its just a general email issue.”

Last weekend, he made headlines by releasing a letter he’d sent to
Secretary of State John Kerry, the State Departments’ inspector general and
Abedin herself seeking answers to questions about the alleged wrongful
$10,000 reimbursement for unused leave from the State Department. That
overpayment dispute with Abedin, who is now running Clinton’s 2016
presidential campaign, came to light only because of Grassley’s letter.

Abedin received $33,000 in May 2013 for “unused” leave because she never
requested time off during her three-year stint at State.

But a State watchdog found she took time off for maternity leave and for a
trip she reportedly took to Italy and France with her husband, former Rep.
Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

Abedin’s legal team says the allegations are baseless, noting that she
consistently worked while she was on vacation and during maternity leave,
siting email traffic that attests to her being plugged in from afar.

“I am deeply troubled by gaps in the OIG’s investigation … unsupported
allegations, as well as its conclusatory demand (contradicted by evidence
in the report itself) that Ms. Abedin refund the Department’s alleged
overpayment to her of $9,857.73,” reads a May 29, 2015 letter by one of her
lawyers, Miguel Rodriguez, to Kerry.

They say she is not being treated fairly: “[W]hile it is undisputed that
Ms. Abedin worked during her periods of leave — and indeed that she was
known as a workaholic who rarely took vacation — absolutely no effort was
made to calculate the amount of time Ms. Abedin worked during the periods
in question and whether her work hours amounted to at least eight hours a
day.”

Since June 2013, Grassley has also been quietly probing Abedin’s unusual
government statusafter reports that Abedin, now vice chair of Hillary for
America, was given “special government employee” status while serving at
the State Department. That unusual dual-employment role allowed the former
Clinton deputy chief of staff to work at State while also receiving a
paycheck on the side from the philanthropic Clinton Foundation and an
outside firm called Teneo.

Grassley says Abedin’s actions involve “potential criminal conduct,”
including not only theft of public money through time and attendance fraud
but also “acts affecting a personal financial interest related to conflicts
of interest connected to her overlapping employment.”

“This started as an inquiry about whether a federal personnel designation
works as intended,” the Iowa Republican said in a statement last week.
“Revelations of private email use and multiple jobs held at the same time
by one individual raised more questions. Now, more details are coming in,
and they warrant more questions.”

Grassley says it’s a matter of taxpayer efficiency.

“The bottom line is still whether the taxpayers are well-served by agency
practices and spending,” he said. “No one will know for sure until the
State Department is more transparent about how it operates.”

On Wednesday, Grassley said he’d “be forced to escalate the scope of my
intent to object to include unanimous consent requests relating to Foreign
Service Officer candidates as well,” if he doesn’t get answers.
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Eric D. Schwerin
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