Brutal new Clinton emails about Teneo remind us of Huma Abedin circa 2010

The latest batch of Clinton emails to be released would be considered a bombshell in any other presidential campaign in American history. Sadly, given the lack of attention most of the media is willing to pay to them combined with the general propensity to focus on whatever Donald Trump said at his last campaign stop makes this pretty much another day that ends in a Y. Add to that the fact that pretty much all of the emails paint the same dismal picture of the lack of ethics on display in the Clinton clan and it seems as if people’s eyes just begin to glaze over.
Still, a quick glance at yesterday’s trove provides a reminder of precisely how well Bill and Hillary Clinton leveraged their connections through the Clinton Global Initiative to line their own pockets. And one name which keeps popping up is their pet company, Teneo. (Chicago Tribune)

Band wrote the memo in 2011 to foundation lawyers conducting a review of the organization amid a brewing feud with the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who was taking a stronger role in leading the foundation and had expressed concerns about Teneo’s operations.
The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

The bold admissions in these emails shows just how apt it was to describe this operation as Bill Clinton Incorporated. The team worked to make sure that Bill Clinton’s “for profit activities” were pushed heavily by CGI and leveraged through companies such as Teneo. The various gigs that Clinton landed in exchange for access to his family and their foundation added up to a nearly $100M payday over a period of six years. (Good work if you can get it.) But the fact that the Clintons were receiving a lot of favors from Teneo is nothing new. It not only benefited Bill and Hillary, but her long time aide Huma Abedin. Ed Morrissey covered this more than a year ago.

While working as a high-level aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin received a curious waiver to work in the private sector simultaneously — and went to work for a firm politically connected to the Clintons and their foundation, Teneo. The waiver itself is under investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a probe that may take on more importance as the FBI succeeds in uncovering more e-mail from Hillary’s server. Politico’s Rachel Bade may have found a quo if not a quid in Abedin’s communications:

A spring 2012 email to Hillary Clinton’s top State Department aide, Huma Abedin, asked for help winning a presidential appointment for a supporter of the Clinton Foundation, according to a chain obtained by POLITICO.

The messages illustrate the relationship between Clinton’s most trusted confidant and the private consulting company that asked for the favor, Teneo Inc. — a global firm that later hired Abedin. Abedin signed on with the company while she still held a State Department position, a dual employment that is now being examined by congressional investigators. …

Does all of this add up to a “criminal enterprise” as some of our friends tend to describe the Clinton Foundation and CGI? That’s for a court to decide in the highly unlikely event that the government ever went after them. But what we are seeing beyond a shadow of a doubt is a paper trail which shows that there was a lot more going on than just charity. People inside the team made no bones about the fact that making money to fatten the Clintons’ personal bank accounts was to be a priority and they were wildly successful at that task.
That should leave voters with one question which seems rather obvious. Why would all of these groups and corporations be so willing to shower cash on the Clintons if they weren’t expecting something in return? I’m not just talking about whatever actual charitable work was going on here. I mean all of the contracts, speaking fees and board membership salaries which fell into Bill Clinton’s lap. Those outfits are in business to make money like anyone else so they don’t just hand it out for no reason. Just how many people have their hooks into the Clintons and will be expecting something in return if she makes it into the White House?