PAY-TO-PLAY ALLEGATION: Abedin implicated Clinton in Foundation trade-off

Just hours after Hillary Clinton dodged a question at the final presidential debate about charges of “pay to play” at the Clinton Foundation, a new batch of WikiLeaks emails surfaced with stunning charges that the candidate herself was at the center of negotiating a $12 million commitment from King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

One of the more remarkable parts of the charge is that the allegation came from Clinton’s loyal aide, Huma Abedin, who described the connection in a January 2015 email exchange with two top advisers to the candidate, John Podesta and Robby Mook.

Abedin wrote that “this was HRC’s idea” for her to speak at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Morocco in May 2015 as an explicit condition for the $12 million commitment from the king.

“She created this mess and she knows it,” Abedin wrote to Podesta and Mook.

The “mess” refers in part to the fact that the three Clinton advisers were discussing the possibility of the former secretary of state pulling out of speaking at the May 2015 event because it was happening one month after the official launch of her presidential campaign and could raise more questions about her role at the foundation.

What did these donors get in return?” Charles Ortel, a philanthropy expert who has been critical of the Clinton Foundation’s practices, said in an interview with Fox News. “We are scratching the surface now.”

While Clinton was secretary of state, her department in 2011 charged that the Moroccan government was behind “arbitrary arrests and corruption in all branches of government.”

At the final presidential debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, Republican nominee Donald Trump demanded Clinton give back large contributions to the foundation from countries with questionable human rights records.

“It’s a criminal enterprise,” Trump said. “Saudi Arabia giving $25 million, Qatar, all of these countries. You talk about women and women’s rights? So these are people that push gays off business — off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly. And yet you take their money.”

Clinton did not directly answer Trump’s attack, instead focusing on her own questions about Trump’s foundation as well as what she billed as positive parts of the work of the Clinton Foundation.

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