Emails obtained by a conservative watchdog group show that former Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band characterized Nigerians as “complete thugs,” complained that President Obama was dissing the foundation and bristled that the State Department billed the foundation for travel.
The State Department gave the emails to Citizens United as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and the organization made hundreds of them publicly available Saturday.
Band offered his opinion of Nigeria in response to a question by Huma Abedin, a top aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She asked Band in an email on July 22, 2009, how his trips to Africa had been since she was preparing to go there with Clinton the following month.
“Depends where,” Band answered.
Abedin replied that the countries
were Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, Liberia and Congo.
“Nigeria are [sic] complete thugs,” Band wrote. “Kenya/liberia [sic] good. Liberia is crazy drive from airport and long No [sic] where to stay Bob johnson [sic] will push his project.”
That was an apparent reference to Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, who created a five-star resort in Liberia called Kendeja after hearing the country’s president speak at a Clinton Global Initiative conference in 2006.
South Africa, Band wrote, “is always complicated depending on where.”
In September 2011, Band emailed Abedin a White House news release announcing that Obama would hold a presidential forum on community service hosted by the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library to celebrate the “Daily Point of Light” award winners.
Band saw it as a slight.
“They agree to this but not cgi,” he wrote to Abedin. “Sick.”
In August 2009, a State Department employee confirmed that neither Band nor Justin Cooper were government employees and asked for an address to bill the Clinton Foundation for a government plane they rode on from Washington to New York the previous weekend. Band seemed a tad perturbed.
Perhaps he thought it was funny because the foundation at times seemed like an extension of the State Department. The emails add more to a pile of evidence indicating that the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton-run State Department were closely intertwined.
In one exchange from January 2011, Clinton Foundation foreign policy director Amitabh Desai emailed Abedin, Band and State Department official Jake Sullivan to report that the deputy chief of mission at the Bosnian Mission in Washington had said Clinton had mentioned in Sarajevo “a program to train Bosnian entrepreneurs through the Clinton Foundation.” Was it true?
Abedin responded that she was not familiar with it and asked Sullivan.
“Not familiar but not surprised,” wrote Sullivan, now the chief foreign policy adviser to Clinton’s presidential campaign
Another Band email hinted at a problem that has dogged Clinton throughout her presidential run — her health. On Aug. 12, 2009, Band emailed Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills to report that someone — the name is redacted in the copy provided to Citizens United — “called wjc [Bill Clinton] re hrc [Hillary Clinton] being tired on trips and how to handle Says he tried with you.”
Mills forwarded the email to Abedin and Sullivan, adding only “Fyi.”
Emails previously released by Citizens United have suggested health concerns. In an email in September of that year, Abedin wanted to make sure someone had coordinated with the Clinton Foundation about a speech the secretary of state was set to deliver.
“She won’t be able to give it in the round like [Bill Clinton] does walking around with microphone,” she wrote “Are we able to set it up so shes [sic] speaking at a podium?”
Abedin, in a 2013 email obtained by
Judicial Watch, wrote that she was glad to learn that Clinton had been napping.
“Very imp [sic] to do that” she wrote. “She’s often confused.”
In a September 2015 email released by WikiLeaks, campaign chairman John Podesta asked campaign communications director, “How bad is her [Clinton’s] head?”
Source: Lifezette.com
