Clinton Was Lobbied On Her Private Email

FACTDC
Jul 3, 2015
2 min read

The latest batch of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails released this week by the State Department revealed that lobbyists for foreign governments and interests had direct access to Clinton via her private email address.

A lobbyist for the Pacific island nation of Palau lobbied Clinton for an aid package for the country after Palau accepted prisoners from Guantanamo Bay: Hillary Clinton personally emailed with a former advisor-turned-foreign lobbyist about his island nation client early in her tenure as secretary of state, a tranche of roughly 3,000 Clinton emails released from Foggy Bottom on Tuesday night shows. The lobbyist, Jeffrey Farrow, emailed Clinton in 2009 about the American relationship with Palau while the United States was determining how much financial assistance it would give the Micronesian island, and shortly after Palau agreed to become the first nation to accept prisoners from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay. Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal also emailed Clinton on behalf of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was seeking taxpayer money for a power company he represented: Less than a year after former ambassador Joe Wilson sent an email directly lobbying Sec. of State Hillary Clinton on behalf of a company he was consulting, a small governmental agency that Clinton chaired gave the firm, Symbion Power, a lucrative contract to help develop Tanzania’s power grid. Wilson’s pitch, which was sent through Sidney Blumenthal, was among the thousands of Clinton emails released by the State Department on Tuesday. In her capacity as secretary of state, Clinton served as chair of the board for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a federal agency started in 2004 to help develop projects in foreign countries. One of the countries MCC began to help in 2008, before Clinton’s tenure, is Tanzania, the east African nation to the south of Ethiopia. By 2010, MCC began awarding contracts to energy companies as part of a $698 million compact with the Tanzanian government. And one of the beneficiaries of that agreement was Symbion, which was awarded a nearly $50 million contract in September 2010 to provide electricity throughout the country.