Hillary Clinton’s most trusted ally was worried about her boss’ use of a private email server after Clinton missed an important phone meeting with a “foreign minister” because her email confirming the call went to her spam folder, according to documents released Wednesday.
“She missed the call because . . . I never got the email giving us the signoff to do it [the meeting]. So she wasn’t able to do her job, do what she needed to do,” Huma Abedin testified Tuesday during a deposition in a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog.
Abedin, Clinton’s top aide when she was secretary of state, was also asked about an email she sent to Clinton in November 2010 raising concerns about the server.
“We should talk about putting you on state [department] email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam,” Abedin recommended after the meeting fiasco.
“I remember looking for solutions whenever there were challenges with communications,” Abedin said under questioning by lawyers from Judicial Watch, which sued the State Department for access to Clinton’s emails.
Abedin said she wrote the email after Clinton complained about the missed meeting with the unidentified foreign minister.
“My response would have been, here are some suggestions. She clearly missed the window in this exchange,” Abedin testified.
Abedin, wife of former US Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and vice chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign, also said she was “frustrated back at the fact that I wasn’t getting her messages” from the server in the basement of the Clintons’ Chappaqua home.
Asked about Clinton’s response to her recommendation, Abedin said she could not remember any.
“I don’t recall any response . . . we just proceeded with business the way it was before,” she said, acknowledging that Clinton continued to use only the single private email account for both personal and public messaging throughout her tenure at State.
Abedin was also grilled over Clinton’s emailed statement obtained by Judicial Watch that she didn’t “want any risk of the personal being accessible,” a reference to Clinton’s reason for exclusively using the private server.
Asked if she thought Clinton wanted her emails private to circumvent Freedom of Information laws, Abedin replied, “I absolutely do not believe that. No.”
Abedin — who has been so close to Clinton that she is described as being like a second daughter — also distanced herself from the creation of the server.
“I wasn’t involved in the setting up of the server,” she said.
Team Hillary maintains that Clinton did nothing illegal, although she has apologized and said the server was a mistake.