Huma Abedin's Financial Disclosure Failure May Have Been Illegal | [site:name]

Abedin arrives to testify on Capitol Hill, October 16, 2015. (Mark Wilson/Getty)

Long after her request for dual employment as a private consultant was approved by the State Department, Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin failed to report financial transactions, gifts, and future employment information as required by law.

New federal documents published Friday by Judicial Watch show that days after Abedin’s “special government employee” (SGE) status was approved on June 3, 2012 — enabling her to work as a consultant for the Clinton-linked firm Teneo while she served as Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff — State Department workers continued to pester her for obligatory information left blank on an official disclosure form.

“Her termination report is incomplete,” Sarah Taylor, head of the State Department’s financial disclosure office, wrote to two employees on June 5, 2012. “Schedule B, Part I and II were left blank. Schedule C, Part II was left blank.”

“I hope she provided all of her spouse’s assets,” Taylor continued. “Marcella I believe told him, either Huma or her husband called her yesterday indicating there were more assets. The documents I have do not have the income information, only the value information. What was her date of termination? She needs to be aware her termination report will be going up on a DOS website for the public to view and it must be accurate.”

The missing information on Abedin’s termination form included data on financial transactions, gifts, reimbursement, and expenses pertaining to either her or her husband, former New York congressman Anthony Weiner. Abedin also failed to report key information on her future employment with Teneo.

Though the dual-employment arrangement was approved on June 3, documents published late last month by Judicial Watch show that the State Department was still seeking additional information on Weiner’s finances on June 22, after Abedin had begun work at Teneo.

#share#All e-mails to and from Abedin were from her Clinton Foundation e-mail account. A previous State Department search for records relevant to her Teneo employment came up empty, but the case was reopened in July following developments in the investigation of Clinton’s private e-mail server.

Controversy has swirled around Abedin’s dual-employment status, with Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R, IA) leading an investigation into whether she functioned as an intermediary between Clinton and Teneo’s clients. In April 2012 — two months before Abedin officially took the job but after she had requested SGE status — Teneo’s president asked Abedin to intercede with Secretary Clinton on behalf of a wealthy Teneo client and Clinton Foundation donor seeking a position in the Obama administration. The attempt was ultimately unsuccessful.

#related#Abedin is the vice chairwoman on Clinton’s presidential campaign, and still functions as her “body woman.” Clinton claimed last month that she was “not directly involved” in Abedin’s dual-employment status, but “everything that she did was approved under the rules, as they existed, by the State Department.”

But documents published last month by Judicial Watch show that Clinton’s name and title were on the March 2012 form that initiated Abedin’s SGE-approval process. The Clinton campaign says that the form was actually signed by Cheryl Mills, the then-Secretary of State’s chief of staff, but that signature is redacted.

The latest information regarding Abedin’s SGE designation comes as she testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Friday.

— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.