Abedin: Can you hang up the fax line? They will call again and try fax.
Clinton: I thought it was supposed to be off hook to work?
Abedin: Yes, but hang up one more time. So they can reestablish the line.
Clinton: I did.
Abedin: Just pick up phone and hang it up. And leave it hung up.
Clinton: I’ve done it twice now. Still nothing.

In January 2013, Abedin was concerned that Clinton might miss an early-morning call from Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India. Abedin discussed the call with Monica Hanley, another Clinton aide.

Abedin: Have you been going over her calls with her? So she knows [S]ingh is at 8?
Hanley: She was in bed for a nap by the time I heard that she had an 8am call. Will go over with her.
Abedin: Very imp[ortant] to do that. She’s often confused.

In her new position as vice-chair of Hillary’s campaign, Huma has even taken to being a stand-in for her boss at campaign-related events. In October, she and Vogue’s Anna Wintour were off to Paris together for a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser at the home of James Cook, an American businessman.

But, for all her proximity to the white-hot center of American politics, Abedin is every bit as unknown to the general public as her boss is world-famous.

FOLLOW THE FAITH

Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is Pakistani; her late father, Syed Zainul Abedin, was Indian. Both were intellectuals. When Abedin was two years old, the family moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where, with the backing of Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the president of King Abdulaziz University, her father founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think tank, and became the first editor of its Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, which stated its mission as “shedding light” on minority Muslim communities around the world in the hope of “securing the legitimate rights of these communities.”

After Syed died, in 1993, his wife succeeded him as director of the institute and editor of the Journal,positions she still holds. She has also been active in the International Islamic Council for Da’wa and Relief, which is now headed by Nasseef and was banned in Israel on account of its ties to the Union of Good, a pro-Hamas fund-raising network, run by Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Google Abdullah Omar Nasseef, the man who set up the Abedins in Jidda, and a host of right-wing screeds pop up. Though he is a high-ranking insider in the Saudi government and sits on the king’s Shura Council, there are claims that Nasseef once had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—a charge that he has denied through a spokesman—and that he remains a “major” figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. In his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, claims “has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”

Google Yusuf al-Qaradawi and you’ll find even more right-wing hysteria. Says McCarthy, who has conducted something of a personal crusade on the question of the Abedin family’s purported connections, “The Union of Good is a designated terrorist organization and Qaradawi is the leading global jurisprudent”—a term McCarthy prefers to “cleric”—“of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has issued fatwas calling for suicide bombings in the Palestinian territories and in Israel and has called for the killings of American soldiers in Iraq.”

It turns out the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs is an Abedin family business. Huma was an assistant editor there between 1996 and 2008. Her brother, Hassan, 45, is a book-review editor at the Journal and was a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, where Nasseef is chairman of the board of trustees. Huma’s sister, Heba, 26, is an assistant editor at the Journal.

In June 2012, then congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four conservative congressmen wrote to the State Department warning that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government. The letter specifically cited Abedin: “Huma Abedin has three family members—her late father, her mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations,” they wrote. But a month later Senator John McCain, no friend of the Clintons, took to the Senate floor to denounce Bachmann’s letter as an “unwarranted and unfounded attack” on Abedin. “I know Huma to be an intelligent, upstanding, hard-working, and loyal servant of our country and our government.”

“There are few things that President Obama and John McCain agree on. One is that … Bachmann’s lies about Huma are baseless and bigoted fear-mongering,” says Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill.

The Washington Post once described Abedin as “notoriously private.” That’s a fiction, of course. Like many other political operatives, she appears in the media when it suits her agenda. (Appearing in Vanity Fair is not on it; the Clinton campaign declined to make her available despite repeated requests.) The campaign has put the fear of God into many who might speak about her. One longtime Clinton observer explained that, along with Chelsea, Abedin is “the third rail” of the Clinton political world. “I’m being very candid with you,” this person says. “It’s a situation where everyone’s afraid to comment for fear that they’ll be misquoted, for fear of saying something they may think is laudatory that others may not. You can’t imagine the paranoia…. It’s a paranoia that clearly affects how everyone responds to Huma.”

There is a long list of usually chatty Clinton surrogates and supporters who have gone mute on the subject of Huma Abedin. The ones who didn’t get the memo, or choose to ignore it, stick close to the prescribed script. Michael Feldman, the managing director of the Glover Park Group, a communications consulting firm, says that after 20 years Abedin has become part of the “institutional memory” and now occupies “a really important and unique place in an organization.” Bob Barnett, the lawyer who brokered the Clintons’ multi-million-dollar book deals, says Huma is “now one of the key glues that holds Clintonworld together…. She knows everyone and everyone knows her. She knows their strengths. She knows their weaknesses. She knows the roles they’ve played, and that history is priceless to a person in public life.” “Huma is a terrific leader. She’s multifaceted, has a great strategic sense, and she’s a wonderful colleague. She’s an integral part of the team, and her competence is only exceeded by her humility,” says Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

NOTES ON A SCANDAL

When Anthony Weiner, then in his second term as a congressman from Queens, New York, first saw Abedin around Washington, in 2001, early in Hillary’s Senate term, “I was like, ‘Wow, who is that?’ ” he told The New York Times Magazine’s Jonathan Van Meter in 2013 for an in-depth story about their courtship and marriage.

At a Democratic Party retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, in August 2001, he asked her out for a drink. She said she had to work, but Hillary promptly gave her the night off and urged the two young folks to go out and have fun. In the event, Abedin, who doesn’t drink alcohol, ordered tea and then retreated to the bathroom. She was slow to return. “She ditched me,” Weiner recalled to Van Meter.

They kept running into each other, but Abedin wasn’t interested. She thought he was a brash, ambitious, camera-hogging New Yorker. But opposites began to attract during George W. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address, at which Weiner found himself sitting between Senators Clinton and Obama. “I appreciate you looking out for my boss,” Huma texted him. By 2008 their relationship had become romantic, and they were married on July 10, 2010, with President Clinton presiding.

In May 2011, Abedin accompanied Hillary and Obama on a trip to London that included a state dinner at Buckingham Palace. Abedin was invited to the festivities and afterward, in her “spectacular” room at the palace, wrote to Weiner: “I cannot believe what an amazingly blessed life that we live, these incredible experiences we’ve both had.” It was like a fairy tale.

A few days later, though, the fairy tale became a nightmare when Weiner called and left a message for his wife, who was in Washington: “My Twitter was hacked.” In fact, despite what he told Abedin and the media, Weiner had mistakenly tweeted a photograph of his erection, meant for a 21-year-old college student in Seattle, to his 45,000 followers. Reporters besieged him.

Desperate for privacy, he and his wife, then pregnant, spent the first weekend of June at a friend’s house in the Hamptons. As they were packing up the car to return to New York City, Weiner confessed, “It’s true. It’s me. The picture is me. I sent it.” Abedin was devastated. “It was every emotion that one would imagine: rage and anger and shock,” she told the Times.

At a news conference on June 6, Weiner tried to come clean. He admitted he had sent explicit messages to six women during the previous three years, but said he had never actually met any of them. One longtime State Department official says that inside Foggy Bottom some people’s initial reaction was that Abedin might have driven Weiner to sexting because she “was never around. She gave so much to Hillary Clinton, what did she have left for him? It was politically incorrect, but we did wonder.”

Abedin turned to Hillary. After all, who better to give advice on a husband’s extramarital escapades? The next day Huma returned to work at the State Department. “My compass was my job,” she said. “It was where I could go and life was normal.”

“Huma didn’t really want me to [resign], frankly,” Weiner told Van Meter. “Her frame was: ‘We’ve got to get back to normal somehow.’ ” But between Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s call for his resignation and the fact that the Clintons were now disgusted with him, according to Politico, he believed he had no choice. He resigned the following day, which meant the end of his $174,000 salary, leaving the couple to make do with Abedin’s $155,000 State Department compensation.

THE MONEY TRAIL

After the scandal broke, Clintonworld seemed to go into overdrive to help Huma financially. A key first step was finding the family a new place to live. Soon after he resigned from Congress, Weiner sold his Forest Hills condominium for $430,000. Then Abedin sold her Washington condominium, for $620,000, at a loss of $29,000. Thanks to the generosity of Jack Rosen, a longtime Clinton supporter and New York developer, the couple moved into a sunlit, 12th-floor, 2,120-square-foot, four-bedroom apartment in one of Rosen’s buildings, at 254 Park Avenue South. The monthly rent has been estimated to have been at least $12,000. (In an interview, Rosen says the apartment was made available to the couple in part because of his relationship with the Clintons and they paid a market rental rate.) How Weiner and Abedin could afford the rent had the press wondering, although Weiner had started a consulting firm, Woolf Weiner Associates. The couple reported a combined income of $496,000 for 2012. (While Woolf Weiner remains a corporate entity, last July Weiner joined MWW, a public-relations firm. Two months later he was gone. “I was either not consulted or ignored on every part of this excellent summer adventure,” he tweeted.)

The next step was to sign off on Abedin’s 2012 request to become a “special government employee,” or S.G.E., at the State Department. This would allow her to continue to get paid while working from home, in New York City, as a consultant with expertise that no other person could supply on a “myriad of policy, administrative and logistical issues,” according to her application for S.G.E. status. At the same time she could care for her new baby son, Jordan, born on December 21, 2011. She became an S.G.E. in early June 2012 and was paid $62.06 per hour.

By then, Abedin was also acting as a consultant to Teneo Holdings, a global strategic-consulting and investment-banking firm co-founded by her old friend Douglas Band, who did the same thing for Bill Clinton that she did for Hillary. For the seven months she worked at Teneo, she was paid $105,000.

In addition to the State Department and Teneo jobs, Huma was hired as a consultant to the William J. Clinton Foundation to help plan for Hillary’s “post-State philanthropic activities,” and as a personal employee of Hillary’s.

The potential for conflicts cropped up immediately. In April 2012, after her maternity leave and while she was waiting to get her S.G.E. designation, Teneo asked her to intercede on behalf of its client Judith Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, in obtaining a seat on the President’s Global Development Council. That year, the Rockefeller Foundation paid Teneo $5.7 million for public-relations work. “[Rodin] is expecting us to help her get appointed to this,” reads the subject line of an e-mail between two Teneo officials. “[Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s] team is aware of the request, but has not made a commitment,” another e-mail explains. A few months later Band e-mailed Abedin: “Judy Rodin. Huge [Clinton] foundation/cgi [Clinton Global Initiative] supporter and close pal of wjc [Bill Clinton]. Teneo reps her as well. Can you help?” (There was no reply from Abedin in the e-mail chain, and Rodin did not get the appointment.)

In July 2012, Huma, Weiner, and Jordan, then six months old, posed for People magazine in their Park Avenue South apartment, which had been listed for sale at more than $3 million. In the piece Abedin proclaimed, “Anthony has spent every day since [the scandal] trying to be the best dad and husband he can be. I’m proud to be married to him.”

Soon thereafter, Weiner announced he was running for mayor. But it turned out he had again sent sexual messages to a woman on social media, starting in July 2012, after the People story appeared. He ended up losing badly in the Democratic primary. For many in Clintonworld, this was the end of their involvement with Anthony Weiner. “The Clintons have put him in exile,” one longtime Clinton insider says.

But not Huma. She quickly returned to Hillary’s side. Daniel Halper, online editor at the conservative Weekly Standard and the author of Clinton, Inc., an unflattering portrait of the Clintons, theorizes Huma had little choice after the second sexting fiasco but to stick with Hillary. “She started sort of easing her way out,” he says. “It would have helped if she was the First Lady of New York and would’ve had her own gig going, but, of course, her husband completely fucked her over. But, at that point, there was no way for her to exit gracefully.”

CORN STATE CRITIC

In June 2013, Huma’s various roles caught the attention of Iowa Republican senator Charles Grassley, then the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a June 13 letter to Abedin, he claimed that Teneo had paid her for gathering “political intelligence” on behalf of its clients. (Teneo disputes this assertion.) He noted that, in addition to her $135,000 State Department compensation, she had also been paid “as much as $355,000” for her other consulting. He said he was “concerned” that her S.G.E. status “blurs the line between public and private sector employees.” He asked her to provide him information about her various jobs. In her July 5 response, she denied providing any advice or insights to Teneo clients about the State Department.

But these answers did not mollify Grassley. Specifically, he objected to Abedin’s becoming an S.G.E., because he believed she provided no irreplaceable expertise and therefore her designation as one had violated Congress’s intent when it created the program, in 1962. The State Department dismissed his concerns. Her appointment as an S.G.E. “was consistent with employment and ethics rules,” it said. “She was retained for her expert knowledge of policy, administrative, and other matters.”

Grassley, now the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, remains unsatisfied and has cited another Abedin-related beef: he claims she had worked 244 days as an S.G.E., far more than the 130 days allowed by the federal S.G.E. law. “If there’s a reason for more than 130 days, then she shouldn’t be an S.G.E.,” he says. “She ought to be a full-time employee.” But, according to someone close to Abedin, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General “miscalculated” the amount of time Huma worked as an S.G.E. and Grassley and his staff are “wrong” about the implications of her working more than 130 days as one. In her interview with the O.I.G,. Abedin recalled receiving verbal approval for the time she spent working.

Grassley continues to probe Abedin’s potential conflicts of interest when she was getting four different paychecks at once. “We know she set up dinners for Secretary Clinton and her private-sector employers and e-mailed private-sector employees from government accounts,” he says.

During the course of his looking into Abedin’s S.G.E. status, the senator stumbled upon an O.I.G. “criminal” inquiry, commenced in October 2013, about whether Abedin knowingly got paid for hours she did not work while she was on vacation and maternity leave. The heavily redacted report of the inquiry, dated January 2015, is titled “Huma Abedin. Embezzlement.” Essentially, the O.I.G. found that Abedin was paid $33,140.03 (or $20,331.42 after taxes) in a lump sum as a result of her possibly submitting “false or inaccurate time records resulting in pay received for work hours which should have been charged to sick and/or annual leave.” (The Department of Justice declined to prosecute.)

The report makes clear that there was confusion about whether she had been authorized to take a maternity leave and whether she should have been paid for a “babymoon”—an August 2011 trip Abedin, then pregnant, and Weiner took to Italy. During that trip, she said in an interview with investigators, “Every day we had calls. We had emails. I was—I feel like I was constantly on conference calls. I have clear memories of walking around and just being on a conference call the whole time as we were walking.” The 161-page report concludes that the State Department wants her to repay $10,674.32, which equates to 62 days of work. As of this writing Abedin has not done so, pending an administrative appeal.

In Clintonworld, the reaction to Grassley’s relentless assault on Huma is one of resignation. “It’s understood that if you live in that white-hot center in Clintonland you’ll be the subject of investigations, you’ll be the subject of personal attacks,” explains the longtime Clinton observer. “You expect it to come, and it’s handled. She’s done nothing wrong and has nothing to be apprehensive about. It doesn’t mean she still won’t be attacked.” Another says simply, “Senator Grassley would not be pursuing Huma if she was not a key senior aide to Secretary Clinton.”

Grassley says that charge is ridiculous and that he has no plans to give up this fight until he gets more information from Abedin and the State Department. The Judiciary Committee’s lawyers have been trying to schedule a meeting with Abedin’s lawyer, Miguel Rodríguez, but that meeting keeps getting postponed. (Each side says the other is to blame.) “I have to go by my reputation,” Grassley says. “I don’t give up. You know the old saying ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat’?”

But Rodríguez says, “Neither the law nor the facts support Senator Grassley’s baseless allegations and extrapolated conclusions. It is disappointing that the senator and his staff continue to focus a politically motivated campaign on Ms. Abedin, who has been known her entire professional life for hard work, integrity, and her sterling reputation. It is people like Ms. Abedin whom we should all want in public service.”

Whether it’s palatable for the vice-chairman of Hillary’s presidential campaign to be embroiled in allegations of conflicts of interest, obtaining patronage jobs, or misrepresenting time worked remains to be seen. Asked if at some point Huma becomes a liability to Hillary, the long-term Clinton insider replies, “It’s like anything else. I don’t think so, but you know I don’t have any idea. Hillary is very loyal, but she’s obviously pragmatic.”

It’s all gotten more complicated since the simpler days of 2011, when one Saturday morning, just before noon, Huma sent Hillary a copy of an A.P. story about gunmen who tried to assassinate the head of the Libyan Army. Hillary replied about an hour later: “Did you get info from Chelsea about the wall lamps?”

Chelsea had sent Huma the link. Huma replied, “They are beautiful, but way out of my price range!”

“Did you look at all the ones in the link to the brand?” Hillary asked later that afternoon. “Can you call me at home?”

Ed Note: This article has been changed from its original, adding an attribution to the New York Timesin the opening paragraph.

Related: How Hillary Clinton’s Loyal Confidants Could Cost Her the Election

1/11

11 Times Hillary Clinton Had Something Worth Whispering

U.S. Chief of Protocol, Ambassador Capricia Penavic Marshall

Photo: By Greg E. Mathieson Sr./MAI/Landov.

________________________________________

by LEE STRANAHAN18 Jan 20161,297

“Still don’t believe Media Matters functions as a propaganda machine to aid and abet Hillary Clinton’s political aspirations? Just  read its response to a Vanity Fair article titled Is Huma Abedin Hillary Clinton’s Secret Weapon or Her Next Big Problem?

The left-wing attack machine wasted no time in posting an article with false information and smears in order to protect the Clinton campaign.
Hillary Clinton has stated publicly that she helped “start and support” Media Matters, and that organization has consistently come to Clinton’s aid with a consistent campaign of misinformation, half-truths and smears of her critics that can then get repeated by the mainstream media.
The Vanity Fair article must have sent shockwaves through the Clinton camp. It’s rare to read mainstream press criticism of Huma Abedin.
Instead, mainstream adoration for Huma by the media is often so over the top that even other outlets are forced to say something. For example, after Abedin’s husband, disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, was once again caught sexting with other women as he ran for mayor of New York City, New York magazine published a piece so gushing that it led the Atlantic to write an article titled New York Magazine Has a Crush on Huma Abedin. New Republic chimed in and said that “Abedin always gets good press, but this piece takes it to a new level” and cited this description of Huma as an example of New York’s Silliest/Creepiest Huma Abedin Descriptions:

She wore bright-red lipstick, which gave her lips a 3-D look, her brown eyes were pools of empathy evolved through a thousand generations of what was good and decent in the history of the human race.

Despite the fawning coverage she has received, there are many unanswered questions about Abedin, especially given her complete access to Hillary Clinton, one of the most powerful people in the world, a former Secretary of State and possible future president. As Vanity Fair’ William Cohan writes in his piece:

Over the years Huma has served in several positions, with increasingly important-sounding titles. She has been Hillary’s “body woman,” her traveling chief of staff, a senior adviser, and a deputy chief of staff when Hillary was secretary of state. Now, based in Brooklyn, she is the vice-chair of Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The Facts about Huma Abedin and Abdullah Omar Nasseef

To his credit, Cohan’s Vanity Fair piece on the secretive Abedin confirms a number of facts that have been reported by conservative media for a couple of years but have been twisted and convoluted by the mainstream media.
For example, the Vanity Fair article flatly lays out the information that Huma Abedin was an assistant editor at a publication called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs from 1996 until 2008. He writes:

When (Huma) Abedin was two years old, the family moved to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where, with the backing of Abdullah Omar Nasseef, then the president of King Abdulaziz University, her father founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think tank, and became the first editor of its Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, which stated its mission as “shedding light” on minority Muslim communities around the world in the hope of “securing the legitimate rights of these communities.”
…
It turns out the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs is an Abedin family business. Huma was an assistant editor there between 1996 and 2008. Her brother, Hassan, 45, is a book-review editor at the Journal and was a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, where Nasseef is chairman of the board of trustees. Huma’s sister, Heba, 26, is an assistant editor at the Journal.

Not one statement is actually controversial because they can all be confirmed by simple research that refers to primary sources. In other words, you don’t need to reference conservative media in any way to determine the truth about the Abedin family and their connections to Abdullah Omar Nasseef.
As the masthead of this 1996 issue of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs shows, Huma Abedin was an assistant editor at Journal. Down the masthead you can see the name of Abdullah Omar Nasseef.
Because of the smear tactics used by Media Matters and repeated by the mainstream media, this point cannot be stressed enough: this is a primary source showing Abedin was an Assistant Editor of the Journal. It’s not a right-wing theory, a conservative fever dream, Islamaphobia nonsense or anti-Muslim fear-mongering. It’s a fact, a cold hard fact shown on the Journal’s masthead at the site where the Journal itself publishes.
Because it’s such it’s an easily verified fact, it should not be a significant breakthrough that the mainstream publication Vanity Fair published the truth about Huma Abedin’s clear and indisputable connection to the Journal and Naseef.
It is a breakthrough, however, and that’s precisely why Media Matters for America immediately went to work trying to obscure the facts, telling its readers— which include many journalists— that claiming Huma Abedin has connections to alleged terror funders is a “spider-web of guilt by association.”
Although Cohan brought the facts about Abedin to light for the first time in a mainstream media article, he failed to flesh out some of the key background of Abdullah Omar Nasseef.
Again, please note that we can point out these facts about Abdullah Omar Nasseef without linking to a single conservative media source. We are only going to link to primary sources and widely respected, left-leaning media like CNN and the New York Times.
Aside from helping found the “Abedin’s family business” it’s beyond dispute that Abdullah Omar Nasseef was the secretary-general of a group called the Muslim World League. That’s not controversial and Cohan does acknowledge this in Vanity Fair:

 In his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League, which Andrew McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, claims “has long been the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology.”

Although it describes itself a nongovernment organization, the Muslim World League is an effectively an arm of the Saudi Arabian government. As a lawsuit posted on the Philadelphia Enquirer website states “a full time employee of the Muslim World League testified as follows:”

Let me tell you one thing, the Muslim World League, which is the mother of IIRO (International Islamic Relief Organization) is a fully government funded organization. In other words, I work for the government of Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government.
Second, the IIRO is the relief branch of that organization which means that we are controlled in all of our activities and plans by the government of Saudi Arabia.
Keep that in mind, please … I am paid by my organization which is funded by the [Saudi] government … the [IIRO] office, like any other office in the world, here or in the Muslim World League, has to abide by the policy of the government of Saudi Arabia. If anybody deviates from that, he would be fired; he would not work at all with IIRO or with the Muslim World League.

According to the group’s own website, the Muslim World League:

…is engaged in propagating the religion of Islam, elucidating its principles and tenets, refuting suspicious and false allegations made against the religion. The League also strives to persuade people to abide by the commandments of their Lord, and to keep away from prohibited deeds. The League is also ready to help Muslims solve problems facing them anywhere in the world, and carry out their projects in the sphere of Da’wah, education and culture. The League, which employs all means that are not at variance with the Sharia (Islamic law) to further its aims, is well known for rejecting all acts of violence and promoting dialogue with the people of other cultures.

The group’s claim about “rejecting all acts of violence” is specious given its connection to the Saudi government and the Kingdom’s advocacy for sharia law, which it practices with gusto.
Desperate to retain the Saudi royal family’s iron grip, Saudi Arabia banned all public gatherings. The Saudi Arabian government uses both public beheading and crucifixion as punishments, for example, and in 2012 sentenced a 16-year-old who’d protested against the government to both. Saudi Arabia recently sparked international outrage when it executed over 40 people deemed “terrorists.” Many were beheaded.
Following 9/11, the Saudis came under intense government scrutiny for their role in funding terror through ostensively charitable groups. In 2007, ABC News reported Saudis Still Filling Al Qaeda’s Coffers:

Despite six years of promises, U.S. officials say Saudi Arabia continues to look the other way at wealthy individuals identified as sending millions of dollars to al Qaeda.
“If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia,” Stuart Levey, the under secretary of the Treasury in charge of tracking terror financing, told ABC News.

The mainstream media has done nothing to serious vet the connection between the Clinton and Saudi Arabia, and the key role Huma Abedin plays in the life and work of Hillary Clinton are one core link. Abedin not only lived in Saudi Arabia from the time she was two years old, but her mother currently lives in Saudi Arabia and runs the Journal for Muslim Minority Affairs as well as being a dean at a woman’s college there.
Further tying the Clintons to the Saudis is big money.  CNN reported in 2008 that “donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation include amounts of $10 million to $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” Vanity Fair points out Huma’s ties there after Clinton left her role as Secretary of State:

In addition to the State Department and Teneo jobs, Huma was hired as a consultant to the William J. Clinton Foundation to help plan for Hillary’s “post-State philanthropic activities,” and as a personal employee of Hillary’s.

The Saudis have denied the accusation they’ve funded terrorism and also say they complied with U.S. orders, telling ABC “that after the Sept. 11 attacks, the country took prompt action and “required Saudi banks to identify and freeze all assets relating to terrorist suspects and entities per the list issued by the United States government.”
One of the organizations specifically singled out for funding terrorism was founded by the Abedin family benefactor. In 1988, Naseef also founded the charitable giving arm of the Muslim World League, an entity called Rabita Trust.
Remember the League’s connection to the Saudis as stated earlier and it’s clear that Naseef was not a loose cannon but effectively acting as an “employee” of the Kingdom.
One of the other founders of the Rabita Trust was Wa’el Hamza Julaidan, who that same year would also become one of the four founders of Al Qaeda. In 1984, Julaidan had worked with Osama bin Laden to set up mujahedin training camps in Afghanistan. As U.S. News reported in 2003:

Afghanistan forged not only financial networks but important bonds among those who believe in violent jihad. During the Afghan war, the man who ran the Muslim World League office in Peshawar, Pakistan, was bin Laden’s mentor, Abdullah Azzam. Another official there was Wael Julaidan, a Saudi fundraiser who would join bin Laden in founding al Qaeda in 1988. Documents seized in raids after 9/11 reveal just how close those ties were. One record, taken from a Saudi-backed charity in Bosnia, bears the handwritten minutes of a meeting between bin Laden and three men, scrawled beneath the letterhead of the IIRO and Muslim World League. The notes call for the opening of “league offices . . . for the Pakistanis,” so that “attacks” can be made from them. A note on letterhead of the Saudi Red Crescent–Saudi Arabia’s Red Cross–in Peshawar asks that “weapons” be inventoried. It is accompanied by a plea from bin Laden to Julaidan, citing “an extreme need for weapons.”

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the government froze the assets of the Rabita Trust for funding terrorism. As the New York Times reported in October, 2001:

The Bush administration vowed today to seize the assets of more individuals it says support terrorism, including a prominent businessman from Saudi Arabia, a United States ally whose reluctance to move against people and groups with ties to Osama bin Laden has become a politically sensitive
…
Also on the list is Rabita Trust, a Pakistani charity that at least until recently had Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on its board. Administration officials said they warned President Musharraf of the impending order against the Rabita Trust and encouraged him to disassociate himself from what they described as its founder’s links to Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden’s terrorist network.

In March, 2002 federal law-enforcement officials conducted raids on 15 organizations that the Treasury Department suspected of laundering money. The New York Times reported:

One other place searched today was the office of the International Islamic Relief Organization at 360 South Washington Street in Falls Church, Va., another Washington suburb.
That charity has a parent, the Muslim World League, that officials said was also searched. Corporate records show that the Muslim World League, which is financed in part by the Saudi government, is based at the same address as the relief organization, in Falls Church, but that it has used the Herndon building as a mailing address.
Last October, the Treasury Department listed another Islamic charity financed by the Muslim World League, the Rabita Trust, as having connections to Al Qaeda.

The connection of Abdullah Omar Nasseef to terror funding in general and Al Qaeda specifically is clear and convincing; just as clear and persuading as his connection to the Abedin family is.
The Muslim World League was the mother organization of two groups the government believed were involved in funneling money to terrorists–the Rabita Trust and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). Both groups are listed on the Treasury department’s website. Both Naseef’s co-founder Wa’el Hamza Julaidan himself and the Rabita Trust as an organization were placed by lists of terror funders by both the United States and the United Nations.
The Treasury Department met cited the Rabita Trust “for providing logistical and financial support to al Qaida.”
The Treasury Department’s discussion of the IIRO goes into detail about the money and logistics support they provided terror groups and includes information that shows that these provide both legitimate charity services but also act as a money laundering operation to get funds to terror groups:

International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO)
The IIRO was established in 1978 and, according to its website, the organization has branch offices in over 20 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil (Al-Mujil) is the Executive Director of the IIRO Eastern Province (IIRO-EP) branch office in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  Al-Mujil has been called the “million dollar man” for supporting Islamic militant groups.  Al-Mujil provided donor funds directly to al Qaida and is identified as a major fundraiser for the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
…
The IIRO-PHL is a source of funding for the al Qaida-affiliated ASG.  IIRO-PHL has served as a liaison for the ASG with other Islamic extremist groups.  A former ASG member in the Philippines familiar with IIRO operations in the country reported that a limited amount of foreign IIRO funding goes to legitimate projects and the rest is directed to terrorist operations.

…
The IIRO Indonesia director has channeled money to two Indonesia-based, JI-affiliated foundations.  Information from 2006 shows that IIRO-IDN supports JI by providing assistance with recruitment, transportation, logistics, and safe-havens.  As of late 2002, IIRO-IDN allegedly financed the establishment of training facilities for use by al Qaida associates.

Vanity Fair did publish some other elements of the close connections between the Abedin family, Naseef and groups with terror funding designation. Writing about Abedin’s father and mother, Cohan writes that “in 1993, his wife succeeded him as director of the institute and editor of the Journal, positions she still holds.She has also been active in the International Islamic Council for Da’wa and Relief, which is now headed by Nasseef and was banned in Israel on account of its ties to the Union of Good, a pro-Hamas fund-raising network, run by Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
After some solid initial work in the article, howerCohan suddenly gives readers the impression that Nasseef’s connection to terror funding might possibly be a sketchy, tenuous affair that still up for debate, pushed by “right-wing screeds.” The article doesn’t even mention the IIRO or the Rabita Trust despite Naseef’s clear connections and both group’s designations. Instead, the Vanity Fair article says:

Google Abdullah Omar Nasseef, the man who set up the Abedins in Jidda, and a host of right-wing screeds pop up. Though he is a high-ranking insider in the Saudi government and sits on the king’s Shura Council, there are claims that Nasseef once had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—a charge that he has denied through a spokesman…

Again, if you’re skeptical about these claims just click on any of the above links. There’s not a right wing screed in the bunch. Everything about Abedin and Naseef can be proven through primary and left-leaning mainstream media sources.
The lack of any mention of all about the Rabita Trust or the IIRO combined with the inherently insulting phrase “right-wing screeds” may have been intended to mollify Democrats who are desperate to smother the Huma Abedin story, but it utterly failed.
Media Matters went on the attack against Vanity Fair, anyway. And why not? The mainstream media had already proven that it wouldn’t report any of this material as it related to Huma Abedin in 2012.

Anatomy of a Smear Campaign

The “protect Huma” smears have six elements:

1. Never mention that Huma Abedin was an Assistant Editor at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs for over a decade. Simply leave that fact out of your reporting and assume your audience won’t do the research themselves.
2. Never mention Abdullah Omar Nasseef’s clear connections to terror funding, as supported by both the U.S. goverment and reporting in sources non-right wing sources like the New York Times.
3. Write the whole thing off as a convoluted, completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. Because the audience does not know Huma worked at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs or about Naseef’s terror funding ties., with no clear connection to Huma Abedin at all.
4. Call it a conservative fantasy. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy since nobody else in the mainstream media will report the facts, so the facts are only being reported by conservative media.Point to the lack of MSM coverage as proof the the whole thing is a right-wing chimera.
5. Exaggerate the claims of the critics. Tell your audience that Huma is being accused of being “a spy” when in fact what critics are pointing out is that there are clear connections and gaps in the record that raise troubling questions about Huma Abedin that should be answered. If you make the claims seem outrageous, you can distract from the actual facts.
6. Point to Huma Abedin’s Republican defenders such as Sen. John McCain or Sen. Marco Rubio as proof that “even Republicans” don’t think questions should be raised about Huma Abedin. Once again, this conveniently avoids the actual facts.

The new Media Matters article uses every one of these tactics. It doesn’t acknowledge that Huma Abedin was an Assistant Editor at the Journal or explain Abdullah Omar Nasseef’s connection to terror funding.
Media Matters begins its attack on Vanity Fair and Cohan by saying:

Cohan chose to introduce Abedin to the magazine’s readers by regurgitating a series of right-wing attacks that have previously been widely covered or discredited by other journalists — including the ridiculous and offensive question of whether she might have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Media Matters closes the section discussing Vanity Fair’s treatment of Abedin’s associations:

Although Cohan describes some of the allegations as “right-wing hysteria” and provides quotes from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and the Clinton campaign denouncing the attacks, Cohan takes no position on the claims.
In fact, everyone from the Department of Homeland Security to former Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio to former GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (R-MI) has denounced the attacks as false and despicable.

The way these deceptive tactics have played out in the media is important to understand, because it gives a clear indication of what is in store for the 2016 election. Republican presidential contenders and their consultants would do well to study how the media not only failed to vet Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, but actually covering up the facts and attack people for pointing them out.
The six smear tactics outlined above were also used in the summer of 2012 when a handful of Republican representatives including Louis Gomert and Michele Bachmann began asking questions about Abedin.
If you want to be clear on why Andrew Breitbart said: “The media is the enemy” take the time to see what people who don’t read conservative media were being told about Huma Abedin during the last election cycle.
For a prime example, watch Anderson Cooper’s explanation on his CNN show AC360 in 2012 talking about the connection between Huma Abedin and Abdullah Omar Nasseef. He takes over a minute to explain what he calls a “conspiracy” and never once mentions that Huma was the Assistant Editor of the Journal for Muslim Minority affairs for 12 years.

Here’s liberal radio host Sam Sedar in 2012 describing the relationship using hand gestures behind the back of his head to indicate just how crazy it is to think that Huma Abedin has a connection to Naseedf but again, no mention that Huma worked at the Journal.

The Atlantic also published a piece in 2012 called The Convoluted Connections That Link Huma Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, complete with a wacky chart that looks like it was drawn by a crazy person. You’ll note that the chart makes no mention of the Rabita Trust, either.
That article begins:

The spectacle of right-wingers like Michele Bachmann throwing around accusations that State Department deputy chief Huma Abedin is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood has been remarkably information-free. So we decided to trace the most ardent supporter’s case for radical Islamic infiltration of the U.S. government. The results are a tangled, convoluted mess.

Huma Abedin Must Be Vetted

The Vanity Fair article may be the first crack that breaks the mainstream media’s protective shell around Hillary Clinton’s top aide.
The case for raising questions about Huma Abedin is compelling but needs to be laid out in a methodical, fully documented and factually accurate way that will stand up to the inevitable defense mechanism of the mainstream media and Democrat machine.
It’s not just the media that needs to be held accountable; it’s the entire Democratic machine as well as Republicans who defended Huma, including John McCain and Marco Rubio.
They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and there is ample proof that when politicians get pressed for facts, they often fold like a cheap card table.
I asked Representative Keith Ellison about the factual points about Abedin in 2012 on Twitter. Democrats often tout Ellison as a brave pioneer, the first Muslim elected to Congress.

. @KeithEllison : who is listed as the Assistant Editor for the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs here? http://t.co/mV3IUIVY

— Lee Stranahan (@stranahan) November 9, 2012

Congressman Ellison then blocked me.
Follow Breitbart News lead investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School  founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.