Donald Trump Attacks Hillary Clinton After More Emails Released
New questions raised about relationship between State Dept., Clinton Foundation.
-- Donald Trump's campaign is responding to a newly released batch of emails belonging to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling it "more evidence that Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, character, stability and temperament to be within 1,000 miles of public power."
The conservative group Judicial Watch released 44 unseen emails Wednesday totaling 296 pages — evidence, it says, of an inappropriate relationship between the State Department and Bill Clinton's philanthropic organization, the Clinton Foundation.
Judicial Watch obtained the documents as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department related to Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin.
"[Clinton] views public office as nothing more than a means to personal enrichment," the Trump campaign said in its statement released last night. It goes on to call her "corrupt" and accuses her of obstructing the FBI investigation against her, which is now closed.
Judicial Watch sent out a press release highlighting two emails, both from early in Clinton's tenure and both from an attorney at the Clinton Foundation named Doug Band. In one message, Band asks Clinton's aides to find a job for an associate. The name was withheld from the document. "It's important to take care of [Redacted]," Band wrote to Abedin and Cheryl Mills, another top Clinton aide. Abedin replied, "Personnel has been sending him options."
State Department spokesman Elizabeth Trudeau said in a statement to ABC News on Tuesday that the department hires political appointees through a "variety of avenues" and suggested there was nothing unusual about this exchange.
In another email, Band asked Abedin and Mills to connect a Clinton Foundation donor, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, to officials in the State Department, saying the donor is a "key guy there [Lebanon] and to us." Band also suggested that Abedin introduce the donor to former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.
"Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the foundation’s work," the Clinton campaign said in a statement early Wednesday. "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."
"State Department officials are regularly in touch with a range of outside individuals and organizations, including nonprofits, NGOs, think tanks and others," Trudeau added in her statement.
State Department officials say these messages are from the same time as a widely known gap in Clinton's emails, before March 18, 2009, which Clinton says was due to technical problems she had with her email and recordkeeping. Some emails from that period have been recovered by State and the FBI, but not all of them have been made public. The State Department says it will do so eventually.
After reviewing Clinton's use of a private email account during her tenure as secretary of state, FBI Director James Comey announced in July his investigators did not find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing.