These new emails show how much the Clinton Foundation worked with the State Department


A fresh set of emails from Democrat Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state sheds new light on the coordination of efforts that took place between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. About 200 pages of messages released Wednesday show staff at each organization working together to plan events hosting foundation donors, determine talking points, and maintain good donor relations.
In one exchange, for example, a foundation staffer reached out to Clinton's chief of staff at State, Cheryl Mills, to ask how former President Bill Clinton should talk about the Keystone Pipeline in a forthcoming speech. "I prefer he not speak on this lest folks think this will be untoward influence," Mills replied, referencing the Obama administration's then-forthcoming review of the project. Bill Clinton did at least one paid speech for a company financing the pipeline and endorsed the proposal; Hillary Clinton took a variety of positions and ultimately opposed it.
In other conversations, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin spoke with foundation employee Doug Band about securing invites to State events for donors and their friends, as well as determining why a friendly lobbyist was having trouble arranging an audience for her clients at State.
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One day before these emails were released, Hillary Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, claimed at the vice presidential debate that no such coordination existed. "Hillary Clinton as secretary of state took no action to benefit the foundation," he said. "The State Department did an investigation, and they concluded that everything Hillary Clinton did as secretary of state was completely in the interest of the United States." Asked about such an investigation of State-Clinton Foundation interactions in August, a State representative said she was not aware of any such review.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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