Overreach? Clinton campaign says conservative group’s latest email release actually deals with ...

Overreach? Clinton campaign says conservative group’s latest email release actually deals with a successful diplomatic mission

By Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman September 1 at 7:55 PM

A new trove of Hillary Clinton-related emails was released Thursday by a conservative research organization, and the group said they revealed requests for State Department action from Clinton Foundation employees and a key donor in 2009, seeming to add fuel to the notion that the Clintons provided favors to friends and supporters.

"Bill Clinton/Doug Band Sought State Department Favors for Foundation Supporters," said a headline in Thursday's news release from Judicial Watch.

In fact, many of the emails touted by Judicial Watch concern a once-secret mission to North Korea by former president Bill Clinton that led to the release of two American journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for spying. The highlighted emails centered around a moment widely considered a Clinton success, providing the campaign an opening to chide a longtime antagonist whose ongoing litigation against the State Department has produced a series of embarrassing revelations.

"Judicial Watch is now attacking State Department officials and the 42nd President of the United States for rescuing two American journalists from North Korea," said campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin, calling the release "a new low even for this right-wing organization that has been going after the Clintons since the 1990s."

The featured item in Thursday’s Judicial Watch release includes a request from longtime Clinton aide Doug Band for coveted diplomatic passports, which provide easy transit for State Department and other top-level government employees. The request, which was never fulfilled, was part of planning a mission that is generally considered a triumph for American diplomacy and the post-White House career of Bill Clinton.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/01/overreach-clinton-campaign-says-conservative-groups-latest-email-release-actually-deals-with-a-successful-diplomatic-mission/?wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1