A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department.
The lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, sent a letter to the State Department on Friday responding forcefully to two sets of questions posed by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa: whether Ms. Abedin, while a department official, had been overpaid during her maternity leave and a vacation, and whether she had demonstrated a conflict of interest by aiding one of her part-time employers through her work at the State Department.
Well Ms. Abedin and your little gofer attorney, your form of Islamic jihad ain't gonna fly in the US of A, honey. Go ahead and protest like one of your sisters who is upset she can't wear her hijab while working the counter at a beauty parlor but we're on to your ass by now. We know about your connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, we know the jihad that's in your heart.
Fuck off, Huma - take your lumps like a 2/3 human like you are referred to in your holy book and shut the hell up. Can't stand the heat, honey? Then grab a camel out of America any damn time.
Lawyer for Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton Aide, Strikes Back at Accuser
A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department.
The lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, sent a letter to the State Department on Friday responding forcefully to two sets of questions posed by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa: whether Ms. Abedin, while a department official, had been overpaid during her maternity leave and a vacation, and whether she had demonstrated a conflict of interest by aiding one of her part-time employers through her work at the State Department.
Ms. Abedin was granted permission by the State Department to work as a “special government employee” while also performing work for certain outside clients. Mr. Grassley has focused recently on her consulting work in 2012 for the firm Teneo, which was founded by Douglas J. Band, a longtime adviser to former President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Grassley has suggested that emails existed showing that Mr. Band had asked Ms. Abedin to press Mrs. Clinton to seek a White House appointment for Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, a Teneo client. Ms. Rodin is a longtime friend of the Clintons.
But Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter on Friday, cited a Washington Post article pointing out that Ms. Rodin, a longtime friend of Mr. Clinton’s, received that White House appointment in 2010, before the Rockefeller Foundation had retained Teneo “and before Teneo hired Abedin.”
Mr. Grassley has also recently disclosed that the State Department’s inspector general had found that Ms. Abedin received nearly $10,000 in excess pay during her maternity leave. But Mr. Rodriguez wrote that Ms. Abedin was contesting that finding because she “extensively worked” during those periods, as the inspector general’s “report itself found.”
“Chairman Grassley also has asked about Ms. Abedin’s 2011 trip to France and Italy,” the letter said. “That trip was intended to be a vacation, and Ms. Abedin personally paid for it.” But, he added, Ms. Abedin — who is married to former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who resigned from Congress in June 2011 — worked during that trip as well.
Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter, alluded to a recent report that Mr. Grassley had received information from a confidential source about an internal investigation into Ms. Abedin that was completed in May by the State Department inspector general.
“We are deeply concerned that Chairman Grassley’s letter has unfairly tarnished Ms. Abedin’s reputation by making unsubstantiated allegations that appear to flow from misinformation that Chairman Grassley has been provided by an unnamed — and apparently unreliable — source,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. Those allegations, he wrote, included the “suggestion that Ms. Abedin has violated any criminal statute.”
He also noted Mr. Grassley’s assertion that there were about 7,300 emails mentioning both Ms. Abedin and Mr. Band, but he said that this was because the two remained on many of the same mass email distribution lists thanks to their longstanding ties to the Clintons.
“These are but two examples of the unfortunate and unfounded allegations that have been made about Ms. Abedin,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. “No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves.”
Mr. Grassley, who also serves on the Senate Finance Committee, has been aggressive in questioning Ms. Abedin’s status as a special government employee since it was revealed in 2013.
A former investigator on the Finance Committee who worked with Mr. Grassley there and was at one point expected to work for him on the Judiciary Committee, Emilia DiSanto, is now a deputy inspector general at the State Department.
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