Huma Abedin

Huma Abedin
Basic facts
Location:	New York, N.Y.
Education:	George Washington University
Prior Experience •Aide, Office of First Lady Hillary Clinton •Aide, Office of Sen. Hillary Clinton •Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential •Deputy chief of staff, Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton •Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential

Huma Abedin was the vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. A longtime aide to Clinton, Abedin began her career in politics with the office of the first lady and continued to work with Clinton in the U.S. Senate and in the office of the secretary of state.

On the campaign trail, Abedin primarily worked as a surrogate for Clinton and as one who managed operations in the campaign.

She is married to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), but the two separated in August 2016.

Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016

See also: Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016

As a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, Abedin was involved with Clinton's presidential campaign at the highest level from the beginning. In a 2016 Vanity Fair profile, the magazine summarized the relationship between the two: "Wherever Hillary goes, Abedin goes."

In July 2015, Politico reported that Abedin's role—which had previously been on the road with Clinton—was set to change to that of a surrogate and operations manager. The site noted, "Abedin has been elevated to the most senior member of Clinton’s old guard, and the person filling a role Clinton has always valued: the strong, trusted, female adviser." Her official title within the campaign is vice chair.

According to a Vogue profile in August 2016, Abedin's role in the campaign had many variations. She spent time with Clinton on the road but was also involved at the highest level in discussions of tone, messaging, and strategy. According to the profile, Abedin was the leading strategist behind the ideas to launch the campaign at Roosevelt Island, to shift campaign strategies for New York to a block-by-block effort, and to release an ad for Clinton featuring Shonda Rhimes, Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, and Ellen Pompeo. Vogue reported, "Her hours are long, in part because her judgment tends to be essential to the process."

Career

More on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign staff
Staff overview
• Clinton staff overview
Management and strategy
• Robby Mook, Campaign manager • Joel Benenson, Chief strategist and pollster • Amanda Renteria, Political director • John Podesta, Campaign chairman • Huma Abedin, Vice chair
Communications
• Jennifer Palmieri, Communications director • Jim Margolis, Media advisor
Policy and outreach
• Jake Sullivan, Senior policy advisor • Marlon Marshall, Director of state campaigns and political engagement • Maya Harris, Senior policy advisor • LaDavia Drane, Congressional liaison

Office of the first lady

Abedin began her career in politics in 1996 when she worked for Hillary Clinton as an intern in the first lady's office. Abedin was a student at George Washington University and wanted to be a journalist but was assigned an internship in Clinton's office. In a speech at the 2012 Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women’s Mentoring program, Abedin said her mother advised her, "Take a chance. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. And don’t fall in love with Plan A." Abedin worked under Melanne Verveer, Clinton's chief of staff. In a 1999 speech at the White House's Eid celebration for Ramadan, Clinton higlighted Abedin's role in organizing the event and educating her on the traditions of the Islamic faith:

“

I must say that I have seen very personally the impact of Ramadan because of having Huma on my staff, and have had many occasions to talk with her about the particular meaning of Ramadan. But I also feel so grateful that I am able to travel both on my own and with my husband on behalf of the United States to many parts of the world and speak with many different Muslims and learn more about Islam.

”

U.S. Senate staff

When Clinton served in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2009, Abedin worked as her aide and "body person." In 2007, the New York Observer detailed her role in Clinton's Senate staff: "On a day-to-day basis, Ms. Abedin is responsible for guiding the Senator from one chaotic event to the next and ensuring that the many hundreds of situations that arise at each—the photo ops, the handshakes, the speeches—go smoothly." During that time, Clinton ran for president, and Abedin acted as Clinton's traveling chief of staff during the 2008 campaign. During the campaign, New York Magazine called Abedin "Hillary’s beautiful, enigmatic 'body person,' [who] spends nearly every waking minute with Hillary and so has the best sense of her daily rhythms and routines."

State Department staff

When Clinton was confirmed as secretary of state in January 2009, USA Today reported that her staff choices were intended "to surround herself with a cast of die-hard loyalists and veterans of her husband's administration." Among staff transitioning from Clinton's Senate office and campaign infrastructure was Abedin. Fortune described Abedin's duties as Clinton's deputy chief of staff in the State Department: "Abedin has spent hundreds of air-travel hours with Hillary, developing a relationship that colleagues describes as familial–along with an encyclopedic knowledge of the people and projects that populate the complicated global tangle of Clinton-world." The New York Times Magazine credited Abedin with playing "an important role in developing a good relationship between Clinton’s State Department and Obama’s White House." Abedin's colleague Philippe Reines told the magazine, "That didn’t just happen. It required everyone giving everyone else the benefit of the doubt." Near the end of Clinton's term as secretary of state, Abedin stepped down as deputy chief of staff. She did remain an aide to Clinton by serving as a consultant for the Clinton Foundation and by working as a "special government employee," which allowed her to continue in the State Department.

Email investigation

Abedin's time in the secretary of state's office came under scrutiny over questions about her use of a private email server for work emails and over concerns that her relationship with the Clinton Foundation posed a conflict of interest.

In January 2016, as part of a general probe into Clinton and her staff's email, the State Department requested Abedin's email correspondence from 2009 to 2013. The investigation was part of a larger federal probe to see if Clinton or her staff had mishandled classified information or broken any laws by using the private email arrangement. According to Politico, "Abedin had an official email account, but she was among senior officials asked to provide any work-related messages in their personal accounts after State officials became concerned that the agency did not have copies of all the official records it should." According to Politico, part of the State Department's report indicated that Abedin was uncomfortable with the email arrangement, as she wrote in one message to Clinton that the two "should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam."

On August 17, 2016, the nonprofit organization Judicial Watch released a number of email exchanges between Abedin and Doug Band, head of the Clinton Foundation. The emails were obtained after Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request. According to the Los Angeles Times, "The emails shed yet more light on how the lines between Clinton’s work at State and her fundraising for the Clinton Foundation could get blurred." In one particular exchange with Band, Abedin arranged a meeting between the Crown Prince of Bahrain (who had donated to the foundation) and Clinton; in another, she appears to be a go-between for Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and Jeffrey Feltman, the Lebanese ambassador at the time. Of the emails, State Department spokesperson Matt Toner said, "There was no impropriety. This was simply evidence of the way the process works in that, you know, any secretary of state has aides who are getting emails or contacts by a broad range of individuals and organizations."

Relationship to Clinton

Throughout her career, Abedin has been described as a "body person" and "assistant" to Clinton. Politico analyzed her role in relation to in October 2016, when WikiLeaks leaked thousands of emails reportedly hacked from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's account. Through detailed readings of the emails, Politico found that Abedin's chief influence is as someone with deep understanding of Clinton's thoughts and her connections to other public figures. The site reported:

“

In the thousands of emails released by WikiLeaks so far, Abedin is rarely found offering her own suggestions about campaign strategy, or yet another opinion on framing language for one of Clinton’s speeches. Instead, she simply channels the boss, manages the boss, or serves as a very Clinton-specific Google search of a human being — the fastest way for the rest of the campaign's top brass to find who and what Clinton wants and knows. In short, she comes across in the email as the invaluable, irreplaceable uber-assistant of every powerful person’s dreams.

”

Noteworthy events

In August 2016, multiple media outlets reported that Abedin had spent 12 years with the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a journal that has been critical of U.S. foreign policy and the notion of "women's empowerment." Abedin's mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is the journal's editor in chief, and Abedin had appeared on the masthead as the journal's assistant editor.

See also

• Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016
• Hillary Clinton
• Anthony Weiner

External links

• Hillary Clinton Campaign Website