Newly leaked emails show the concerns in Clinton-world about how it would look if the former secretary of state attended a meeting in Morocco after the country’s king committed $12 million to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Campaign manager Robby Mook told Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s personal aide, in January 2015 that campaign chairman John Podesta “flagged the same issues we discussed” about Mrs. Clinton’s planned attendance at the CGI meeting in Morocco. Mr. Mook said Mrs. Clinton was “still considering” whether to go.
Ms. Abedin, formerly a top aide to Mrs. Clinton at the State Department, replied in an email, “She created this mess and she knows it.”
“The condition upon which the Moroccans agreed to host the meeting was her participation,” Ms. Abedin wrote. “If hrc was not part if it, meeting was a non-starter.”
She added that CGI “wasn’t pushing for a meeting in Morocco and it wasn’t their first choice.”
“This was HRC’s idea, our office approached the Moroccans and they 100 percent believe they are doing this at her request,” Ms. Abedin wrote. “The King has personally committed approx $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting. It will break a lot of china to back out now when we had so many opportunities to do it in the past few months.”
Those attending the meeting, including heads of state and corporate chiefs, were expecting Mrs. Clinton to show up for the meeting in the first week of May 2015.
But by March, Mr. Mook wrote to Mr. Podesta in an email that Ms. Abedin expected Mrs. Clinton “to cancel at the last minute.”
Mrs. Clinton ended up skipping the event, instead campaigning in California and Nevada. Former President Bill Clinton attended the meeting in Morocco in her place.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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