Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called for an “expedited investigation” by a special prosecutor into “pay-to-play” accusations involving the Clinton Foundation, amid new allegations the group sought special access for donors with Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
“The Clintons made the State Department into the same kind of pay-to-play operations as the Arkansas government was: pay the Clinton Foundation huge sums of money and throw in some big speaking fees for Bill Clinton and you got to play with the State Department,” Trump said at a campaign rally Monday night in Akron, Ohio.
“The amounts involved, the favors done, the significant amount of time, require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately,” he added.
Trump also called the investigation by the FBI and Justice Department into Clinton’s private email server a “whitewash,” and said the two agencies “cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clinton’s crimes.”
Earlier Monday, conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch released new emails showing communications between Clinton aide Huma Abedin and the Clinton Foundation while Clinton was secretary of state. The group said they show Abedin “provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state,” including for Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain.
That email exchange occurred in June 2009. It started with top foundation official Doug Band notifying Abedin that the crown prince was coming to the U.S. and seeking a meeting. He noted he is a “good friend of ours.”
Abedin wrote back that the crown prince had asked to see Clinton through “normal channels.”
She added: “I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny.”
Two days later, Abedin wrote to Band saying they were offering up a morning meeting between Clinton and the crown prince.
Fox News also reported Monday that, according to previously unpublished documents, a senior executive at the Clinton Foundation left almost 150 telephone messages for Clinton’s top aide at the State Department within a two-year time frame.
A review of State Department call logs for Cheryl Mills, the longtime Clinton confidant who served as chief of staff for the entirety of Clinton’s four-year tenure as America’s top diplomat, reflects at least 148 messages from Laura Graham – then the Clinton Foundation’s chief operating officer – between 2010 and 2012. No other individual or non-profit appears in the logs with anything like that frequency or volume, the review found.