Clinton Email Update: Judicial Watch Releases Former Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin...

Full title: Clinton Email Update: Judicial Watch Releases Former Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin Deposition Testimony

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Huma Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton throughout her four years as secretary of state and who also had an email account on the clintonemail.com system. The deposition transcript is available here.

Abedin testified it was Clinton’s decision to use her non-state.gov email; to her knowledge that only Hillary Clinton, Abedin and Chelsea Clinton had accounts on the clintonemail.com system; and that the clintonemail.com system may have interfered with Mrs. Clinton’s ability to do her job.

Abedin is among seven depositions of former Clinton top aides and State Department officials that Judicial Watch has questioned under oath. Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy testified today, Wednesday, June 29.

This discovery arises in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Clinton. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). Judge Sullivan ordered that all deposition transcripts be made publicly available.

Said to be among the most ethically challenged Hillary emails: Abuse Of Position
<><> A Sept. 15, 2011, email forwarded to Clinton, Sullivan and aide Huma Abedin listed multiple State Department officials attending the Clinton Foundation Global Initiative conference despite having “no official role.”

<><> Robert Hormats, a department official, was also a speaker at a dinner co-hosted by the Goldman Sachs Wall Street investment firm that later paid Clinton $675,000 for three speeches. The dinner focused on investing in women, Clinton’s favorite Clinton Foundation project.

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Sen Charles Grassley has been pressing the State Department to answer questions over Huma Abedins lucrative govt job arrangement facilitated by then SoS Hillary.

Sen Grassley wrote in a June 13 letter: It appears that one of Abedin's clients, the Clinton-connected Teneo Strategies, may have been compensating Ms. Abedin for gathering information from US government sources for the purpose of informing investment decisions of her consulting clients - or in other words, political intelligence. This raises important questions about whether Abedins dual role was adequately disclosed to government officials who may have provided her information without realizing that she was being paid by private investors to gather information.

Grassley's letter recounted:

<><> Abedin allegedly sent or received more than 7,000 emails on her US government account that involved Teneo's Doug Band, a close confidante and travel companion of the globe-trotting Bill clinton;

<><> one email exchange involved Teneo's Doug Band pressuring Abedin to encourage her State Department boss, Hillary Clinton, to facilitate a White House appointment for one of his clients. Judith Rodin, then-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, "donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation," Mr. Band allegedly noted in his email to Ms. Abedin.

<><> email evidence allegedly suggests that Ms. Abedin and another Hillary aide, Cheryl Mills, colluded to find a way to ensure the US govt paid for Ms. Abedin's travel to and from New York.

<><> multiple allegations received by Sen Grassley's Judiciary Committee indicated Abedin had actually taken leave during her time as a govt employee, casting doubt on whether Abedin should have received $33,000 in taxpayer money.

<><> allegations surfaced that the State Dept personnel rule was quietly bent to permit Abedin to collect her government paycheck while wielding her influence to the benefit of her other employers.

<><> Hillary Clinton jetted to Ireland with Abedin at her side for her last official trip before exiting the State Dept, during which Hillary attended an event hosted by a major Clinton Foundation donor that had been promoted by Teneo (for which Abedin then-served as a "consultant")

<><> Abedin's special employment status gave her heavy influence over Hillary Clinton's State Dept daily schedule and travel plans at the same time Abedin served as a senior adviser at Teneo, and performed other duties at the Clinton Foundation.

<><> Abedin using information about Hillary's travel schedule in discussions w/ her clients, could be a serious breach of US ntl security, since even the calendar amd travel plans of the Secy of State is considered classified information.

<><> Abedin was among several key aides to Hillary Clinton that hosted email accounts on a private server in the 2016 presidential candidate's Chappaqua, New York home, in violation of federal records laws.

REFERENCE Abedin worked as a full-time staffer to Hillary Clinton January 2009-June 2012; she was then given a "special government employee" designation and took on roles at the Clinton Foundation and Teneo.That designation is designed to allow individuals who fill "an unmet government need for rare or unique expertise" to retain their private-sector positions while receiving compensation from the government.

Abedin is currently vice-chair of Hillary's presidential campaign committee.

This is long, but it contains a lot of information that relates to the uses of the emails that Clinton sends, back then they were not worried, they didn’t think anyone was keeping tract, but some one was:

SUBSECTION: CDFI and BCCI
Revised 12/15/99

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS FUND (CDFI)

South Shore Bank in Chicago in the 80’s caught the eye of the Clintons for their lending to run-down neighborhoods. Jan Piercy, Hillary’s roommate from Wellesley College, joined Shorebank as a top executive in 1984. The Clintons and Shorebank established the Southern Development Bankcorp in Arkadelphia in 1986. Hillary Clinton and Mack McLarty were on the board. It was formed with an investment from Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the Arkansas teachers pension fund, and a state corporation established by Governor Clinton. The bank and its subsidiaries used the Rose Law Firm. After Bill Clinton was elected president, the 1994 Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act created something called the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI), which was to be run by Treasury and which was to give $37 million to community development banks and nonprofit groups.

Shorebank got $4.5 million, the largest, Southern Development got $2 million, two other institutions related to Shorebank — Kentucky’s Louisville Development Bankcorp got $2.3 million and Douglass Bancorporation of Kansas City, Kansas — got $1.9 million. The four institutions got about one-third of all the money. In routine investigation it was noted that these four institution’s evaluation forms were uniquely undated and were all handled by Steve Rohde personally and the applications were all prepared by Shorebank. An Ernst & Young examiner wrote, a senior CDFI official “instructed reviewers to emphasize positive information for those being ‘passed’ and to emphasize negative information for those ‘failing.’”

BANK OF CREDIT AND COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL (BCCI)

Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi founded BCCI in 1972, it was incorporated in Luxembourg and expanded rapidly. By the early 1980s BCCI had become the preferred bank for such customers as the CIA, Colombian drugs cartels, arms smugglers and various third world dictators. By the mid-eighties, there was gathering evidence of financial irregularities, corruption and criminal involvement - an investigation ensued.

In December 1992, shortly after Clinton was elected, the Committee on Foreign Relations - US Senate produced a report that pointed out specific problems in the investigation and gave 20 specific areas which needed additional investigation (summarized below) The disposition of these issues is unknown. All that has come to the attention of this list is one settlement for $5 million in February of 1998.

•The extent of BCCI’s involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear program.
•BCCI’s manipulation of commodities and securities markets in Europe and Canada.
•BCCI’s activitites in India, including its relationship with the business empire of the Hinduja family.
•BCCI’s relationships with convicted Iraqi arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, Syrian drug trafficker, terrorist, and arms trafficker Monzer Al-Kassar, and other major arms dealers.
•The use of BCCI by central figures in arms sales to Iran during the 1980’s
•BCCI’s activities with the Central Bank of Syria and with the Foreign Trade Mission of the Soviet Union in London.
•BCCI’s involvement with foreign intelligence agencies
•The financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies, including the possibility that BCCI related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to move them outside the United States.
•BCCI’s financing of commodities and other business dealings of international criminal financier Marc Rich.
•The nature, extent and meaning of the ownership of shares of other U.S. financial institutions by Middle Eastern political figures
•The nature, extent, and meaning of real estate and financial investments in the United States by major shareholders of BCCI. BCCI’s shareholders and front-men have made substantial investments in real estate throughout the United States, owning major office buildings in such key cities as New York and Washington, D.C.
•BCCI’s collusion in Savings & Loan fraud in the U.S. The Subcommittee found ties between BCCI and two failed Savings and Loan institutions, CenTrust, which BCCI came to have a controlling interest in, and Caprock Savings and Loan in Texas, and as noted above, the involvement of BCCI figures with Charles Keating and his business empire. In each case, BCCI’s involvement cost the U. S. taxpayers money. A comprehensive review of BCCI’s account holders in the U.S. and globally might well reveal additional such cases. In addition, the issue of whether David Paul and CenTrust’s political relationships were used by Paul on behalf of BCCI merits further investigation
•The sale of BCCI affiliate Banque de Commerce et de Placements (BCP) in Geneva, to the Cukorova Group of Turkey, which owned an entity involved in the BNL Iraqi arms sales, among others.
•BCCI’s role in China. As noted in the chapter on BCCI’s activities in foreign countries, BCCI had extensive activity in China, and the Chinese government allegedly lost $500 million when BCCI closed, mostly from government accounts. While there have been allegations that bribes and pay-offs were involved, these allegations require further investigation and detail to determine what actually happened, and who was involved.
•The relationship between Capcom and BCCI, between Capcom and the intelligence community, and between Capcom’s shareholders and U.S. telecommunications industry figures.
•The relationship of important BCCI figures and important intelligence figures to the collapse of the Hong Kong Deposit and Guaranty Bank and Tetra Finance (HK) in 1983. The circumstances surrounding the collapse of these two Hong Kong banks; the Hong Kong banks’ practices of using nominees, front-companies, and back-to-back financial transactions; the Hong Banks’ directors having included several important BCCI figures, including Ghanim Al Mazrui, and a close associate of then CIA director William Casey; all raise the question of whether there was a relationship between these two institutions and BCCI-Hong Kong, and whether the two Hong Kong institutions were used for domestic or foreign intelligence operations.
•BCCI’s activities in Atlanta and its acquisition of the National Bank of Georgia through First American.
•The relationship between BCCI and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. BCCI and the Atlanta Branch of BNL had an extensive relationship in the United States, with the Atlanta Branch of BNL having a substantial number of accounts in BCCI’s Miami offices. BNL was, according to federal indictments, a significant financial conduit for weapons to Iraq. BCCI also made loans to Iraq, although of a substantially smaller nature.
•The alleged relationship between the late CIA director William Casey and BCCI.
•Money laundering by other major international banks. Numerous BCCI officials told the Subcommittee that BCCI’s money laundering was no different from activities they observed at other international banks, and provided the names of a number of prominent U.S. and European banks which they alleged engaged in money laundering.

Background

Financial General, a Washington D.C.based bank with headquarters a block from the White House had been acquired in April 1977 by an investor group lead by William Middendorf II, who was Secretary of the Navy under Nixon and Ford. One member of the investor group was Jackson Stephens (Little Rock, controlling interest in Worthen National Bank and Stephens Inc, associated with Riadys and Clinton)

In November 1977, Stephens introduced BCCI-founder Abedi to Bert Lance, Carter’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Financial General had sold to Lance controlling interest in the National Bank of Georgia in 1975. Abedi introduced Lance to Ghaith Pharaon who proceeded to acquire the stock of Lance’s National Bank of Georgia, a deal consummated on January 5, 1978, a day after Lance’s $3.4 million loan from the First National Bank of Chicago was repaid by BCCI London.

Lance and Stephens helped BCCI take over Financial General. A Financial General lawsuit “Bert Lance, Bank of Credit & Commerce International, Agha Hasan Abedi, Eugene J. Metzger, Jackson Stephens, Stephens Inc., Systematics Inc. and John Does numbers 1 through 25.” Systematics was represented by C.J. Giroir, Webster Hubbell, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of the Rose Law Firm of Little Rock.

Also involved in the takeover were Clark Clifford (the former Defense Secretary under Johnson and lawyer for BCCI), Robert Altman (attorney for Bert Lance and Clifford’s partner), and Kamal Adham (the former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence who was King Faisal’s most trusted advisor, and whose half-sister Iffat was King Faisal’s favorite wife).

In a lawsuit filed March 18, 1978, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Lance with violations of federal security laws, and BCCI’s application to purchase Financial General Bankshares was denied. Abedi then formed Credit and Commerce American Holdings (CCAH), Netherlands Antilles. On October 19, 1978, CCAH filed for approval with the Federal Reserve to purchase Financial General. This application was dismissed on February 16, 1979, but a new application was submitted later. The Federal Reserve finally approved the purchase on April 19, 1982, and BCCI renamed the bank “First American” three months later. Clark Clifford was made chairman and Robert Altman president. The head of Bank Supervision at the Federal Reserve when BCCI’s purchase was approved was Jack Ryan, who later became head of the Resolution Trust Corporation, in which role he denied Rep. Leach’s requests for documents related to Madison Guaranty, the Whitewater thrift.

BCCI founder Abedi donated 500 million rupees for the creation of Pakistan’s Gulam Ishaq Research Institute for nuclear development. “Kamal Adham, who was the CIA’s principal liason for the entire Middle East from the mid-1960’s through 1979, was the lead frontman for BCCI in its takeover of First American, was an important nominee shareholder in BCCI, and remains one of the key players in the entire BCCI affair” (Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair: a Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1992).

Stephens and his Worthen National Bank invested in Harken Energy, a Texas company in which George Bush, Jr., was a board member. “The money Stephens invested came through the Swiss BCCI subsidiary”

In 1987 First American bought the National Bank of Georgia, formerly acquired from Bert Lance by Pharaon.

From the American Spectator 8/94 James Ring Adams

“The public has an overwhelming interest in knowing what business networks have claims on a president and his family. In this context, Hillary’s windfall in the futures market is chilling. . Hillary must still feel grateful to James Blair and Tyson Foods, Inc., who allegedly steered her to her trades; and to Refco and its president Thomas Dittmer, which brokered them..And the Clintons’ futures trading may have made them further beholden to the Stephens bond empire of Arkansas—and entangled them indirectly but significantly with the Pakistani financiers who brought us BCCI.

. Hillary’s trading came to light in mid-March after Lloyd Cutler took over as White House counsel.

In line with his new policy of “openness,” the White House admitted to New York Times investigators that she had plunged $1,000 in the notoriously choppy futures market in October 1978, when her husband had emerged as the clear front-runner in his first race for governor. James Blair, general counsel for Tyson Foods, Inc., was her guide to the market. By the time she closed her accounts in May 1980, she had cleared $99,540, which allowed the strapped couple to put up a down payment on their house and buy tax-exempt municipal bonds..

The First Couple had reason to be embarrassed. Hillary had worked through the Springdale, Arkansas, office of Refco, a fast-growing Chicago-based commodities broker. Its Arkansas outpost catered primarily to Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest poultry firm, whose operations give the small Ozark town a pungent, penetrating odor. Hillary’s personal broker was a professional poker player and 13-year veteran of Tyson Foods named Robert L. “Red” Bone, who had already compiled a substantial record of exchange rules infractions. Just a month before he went to work for Hillary, he had completed a one-year partial suspension on charges of plotting to manipulate the egg-futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. (He later received a second, more serious suspension for violating the first one.)

More significantly, at the end of Hillary’s first year of trading, the Chicago Merc itself suspended Bone for three years for “allocating” trades—letting favored customers take the winning trades and dumping the losers on the rest. The action cited “serious and repeated violations of record-keeping functions, order-entry procedures, margin requirements and hedge procedures.” Hillary’s account wasn’t specifically at issue, but it fit the pattern: her return on her first day of trading—more than $5,000 on $1,000 down—would have been mathematically impossible if Exchange rules were strictly followed.

On October 15, 1979, Hillary’s own investment adviser, Tyson counsel Blair, filed a suit charging Red Bone, Refco, and its president Thomas Dittmer with systematically taking their customers to the cleaners.. The Merc and the Board of Trade now run two of the best funded political action committees in the country. In 1993, the Merc’s Commodity Futures Political Fund disbursed nearly $200,000, making it the eighth most generous finance, insurance, and real estate PAC..

During the 1970s, the Merc invented futures trading in foreign currencies and stock indices and metamorphosed from the bane of Midwest farmers into a major player in global finance. Credit for the growth goes to Leo Melamed, a World War II refugee first elected Merc chairman in 1969 and a dominant power ever since.. Refco, then and now, meant Thomas Dittmer, one of the boldest traders on the Merc. Dittmer pulled off a number of coups in the early 1980s, including a panic in soybean prices and a near corner on coffee, but his most memorable success was the boom in cattle futures that enriched Hillary.

Dittmer used his windfall to make Refco a global player in metal refining, financial futures, and money management. In 1981, he joined the elite club of thirty-seven dealers who buy Treasury securities for the Federal Reserve.

The connection with Refco entangled the Clintons, however remotely, in another segment of the web of influence-buying that was then being spun across the world by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. By itself, this tie might not amount to much, but it takes on added interest from the complex relations between the Clintons and the Stephens family of Little Rock, financiers and Arkansas king-makers with their own BCCI entanglement. The role of Jackson Stephens as financial backer of Governor Clinton has already been widely reported, as has his service to the BCCI’s penetration of the American financial market (see TAS, November 1992). But almost nothing has been said about the equally fascinating appearance of Refco in the affairs of the world’s most corrupt bank. Refco and Stephens also maintained business ties, but it’s an open question whether these involved the BCCI. It’s also an open question whether Bill Clinton’s brush with this world is influencing the federal government’s efforts, or lack of effort, at getting to the bottom of the BCCI scandal.

It can definitely be said, however, that Refco’s international operations have attracted the interest of the untanglers of BCCI’s affairs. BCCI is not only the world’s largest single bank fraud, but also the most ubiquitous. It was founded in the Persian Gulf in 1972 by a Pakistani visionary named Agha Hasan Abedi, who inspired a cult-like devotion from his officers, primarily Urdu-speaking Pakistanis; he also steadfastly ignored economic reality, and wound up losing more than $10 billion. Increasingly desperate to cover his losses, he opened his doors to the world’s vast underground economy, and BCCI became the central bank for terrorists, spies, arms dealers, and drug lords from Burma to Colombia. At the same time, his agents tried to buy their way into every political elite they encountered—including the Arkansas establishment that was watching the rise of the Clintons. In November 1977, Abedi met in Little Rock with Jimmy Carter’s confidant Bert Lance and investment banker Jackson Stephens, a power above and beyond Bill Clinton. Out of this meeting came Abedi’s celebrated takeover of an interstate banking chain based in Washington, D.C., patriotically renamed First American Bankshares and put in the hands of super-insider Clark Clifford. Coincidentally or not, Dittmer and Refco picked up a new client in the aftermath.

The far-sighted Abedi had cultivated Sheikh Zayed well before the mid-seventies boom in oil prices, taking the avid falconer on lavish bustard hunts in the wilds of Pakistan. (Abedi’s agents also catered to the less wholesome tastes of the portly Crown Prince Khalifa.) Zayed became the primary financial backer of the BCCI and still owns its remains. When Abedi decided to buy the Washington, D.C. bank that Jack Stephens was peddling, he advanced one of Sheikh Zayed’s minor sons as a stockholder, with Darwaish acting as the boy’s agent..The deal apparently whetted Darwaish’s appetite for American investments. Around October 1979, he and several assistants set up a Panamanian shell corporation to trade in the American commodities markets. They worked through a Swiss brokerage and placed their orders with Refco. Through November, they transferred more than $100 million of Sheikh Zayed’s money to America, primarily through BCCI headquarters in London.

But the biggest loser with Refco was BCCI itself. From 1983 to 1985, the bank speculated recklessly in the futures market on U.S. Treasury bonds. The futures were a bet on the direction of interest rates and required split-second timing; one incredulous auditor found that BCCI was buying contracts and leaving them in desk drawers. Estimates of the losses reach $860 million.BCCI investigators are currently puzzling over another series of transactions involving Akbar. In addition to his role at the treasury department, he ran the bank’s Grand Cayman branch..These murky global currents, apparently so remote from the Clintons, are looking more important in retrospect. Every new revelation suggests a deeper pattern of relationships than anyone had previously expected. The repeated appearance of the BCCI and its assorted fronts suggests that even now we underestimate Abedi’s ambitions for penetrating the American economy. Through Capcom and Refco, his agents had become players in the Chicago Merc, which was then on its own way to becoming a major factor in global finance. Through its connections with major figures in the cable industry, Capcom and BCCI were apparently establishing a beachhead in American broadcasting. (The hand of the BCCI has been suspected in a minority investment these businessmen made in Ted Turner’s Cable News Network.).

At the time, however, Bill and Hillary very likely had almost no inkling about their benefactors’ extensive connections. Everyone concerned is now trying to minimize their importance. The closest Clinton link to BCCI, Jackson Stephens, maintains that he was an entirely unwitting tool and only for a short time. BCCI prosecutors will agree that Stephens probably never met Darwaish or any other of the nominee shareholders in the takeover that created First American Bankshares. As the stockbroker who arranged to buy these shares, he acted for the account of a dissident faction of the bank’s board (which included himself) in an attempt to oust its management.Yet the interconnections continue to multiply. Stephens Inc., the family brokerage considered one of the largest outside Wall Street, maintained links with Refco throughout the 1980s. In 1980, it cleared futures contracts through Conti Commodities, the international futures trader for Continental Grain Company; Conti was subsequently purchased by Refco. In 1981, Stephens Inc. opened an account with Refco itself, a relation renewed several times in the 1980s. When Hillary was trading with Refco, she also opened a commodities account at Stephens Inc. Yet the Stephens name has not otherwise figured in press accounts..

Beyond these questions is the very urgent matter of the BCCI investigations. At this writing, the U.S. Justice Department and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau are debating how to handle the biggest BCCI figure yet to come to justice in the U.S. (Abedi himself, now an invalid in Pakistan, was recently convicted in absentia in an Abu Dhabi court and sentenced to eight years. But no one expects that the Pakistani government will deliver him to the justice of Sheikh Zayed.) In a deal in May, Abu Dhabi turned over Swaleh Naqvi, Abedi’s number two man, to American custody. Since then he has been in the hands of the federal government, which is negotiating a plea bargain, while D.A. Morgenthau’s more aggressive investigators make no secret of their frustration at his lack of cooperation. Does the Clinton administration really have the heart to press Naqvi for all of the BCCI’s secrets? The saga of Capcom and Refco suggests that the embarrassment could start in its own back yard..”

Alamo Girl

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