The State Department’s Inspector General has uncovered damning evidence in a criminal probe of Huma Abedin and turned it over to the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton’s right hand woman. Jay Soloman reports in the Washington Times:
Federal investigators formally investigated top Hillary Rodham Clinton aide Huma Abedin for the crime of embezzlement after confirming she took a “Babymoon” vacation and maternity time at the State Department without expending her formal leave, resulting in thousands of dollars of pay she wasn’t entitled to receive, The Washington Times has learned.
The probe also gathered evidence she filed time sheets charging the government for impermissible overtime and excessive hours after she converted from a full-time federal employee to a State Department contractor.
The evidence shows that Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Wiener, had the same attitude toward rules and procedures that her boss Hillary manifested. They are for little people. She took a two week vacation in Europe, which she called “Babymoon” in emails, when she was pregnant, without filing required forms to take a formal leave. This resulted in her receiving over $10,000 in accumulated vacation pay when she left full time government employment to which she was not entitled. Her excuses are that she was pregnant and she’s only a girl:
“You are 100 percent right on the Babymoon. I don’t recall. One hundred percent right. I don’t recall filling out any paperwork saying I was taking leave,” she told the investigators. “I’m not even going to blame it on my pregnancy brain.”
If you are not going to blame it, why mention it?
“My husband handles all the finances in our household,” she told investigators during a recorded interview in October 2014.
Abedin and her lawyer maintain that she did work while she was on vacation. She claims a lot of work on unlikely days:
Investigators concluded the missing paperwork allowed Ms. Abedin, among other things, to be paid eight hours by taxpayers on the day she actually delivered her son, the documents show.
But the Justice Department was not really interested in pursuing a Democrat so close to a powerhouse like Hillary:
[D]ocuments provided to The [Washington] Times by a source outside the Senate or the IG’s office make clear, however, the inquiry was clearly criminal in nature and ultimately referred to federal prosecutors. (snip)
After 15 months of extensive document-gathering and interviews, the IG submitted the case for review by the Justice Department public integrity division, which declined to prosecute Ms. Abedin. The “alleged violations” cited were improperly requesting and approving annual leave and “embezzlement,” the documents state.
“The case was not declined based on the merits of the investigation,” stated the final investigative report, dated Jan. 26.
Such a designation usually means federal prosecutors decided not to pursue a case, but only because they didn’t think it worth the resources, not because the facts and evidence couldn’t support a case.
The designation opened the door for the department to seek reimbursement of $10,674.32 in payments that investigators concluded Ms. Abedin was not entitled to receive, the documents show.
Investigators concluded that while they could not prove Ms. Abedin had intended to defraud the government, “the investigation substantiated that Abedin, on several occasions, failed to submit a Request for Leave or Approved Absence.”
There is an entirely separate stream of inquiry by the IG about potential conflicts of interest while Abedin was working as a contractor (a “special government employee” or SGE – a category usually reserved for scientists and others with unique credentials needed by the government; Abedin has a BA degree, but is very, very close to Hillary). Her work for a politically-connected consulting firm presented potential conflucts with her duties as a government contractor. And even on this job, there were fudges of the reporting requirements that benefitted her financially:
The investigators questioned one administrative official in the department who processed timecards about two time sheets in which Ms. Abedin claimed she worked “no duty hours and 18 overtime hours” and another pay period where 13 hours of overtime were claimed when she was a special government employee.
One of the IG reports recounted an interview with the State Department administrative employee about the overtime.
“When asked if she was aware SGEs did not receive overtime,” the report states, the employee told investigators she had been instructed to “keep track of Abedin’s hours in the same manner as when she was” a regular full-time employee and could receive overtime.
A separate investigative report indicated Ms. Abedin’s contractor time sheets “indicated she worked 1,290 hours while employed as an SGE” over six months but that federal regulations mandated “SGEs are to work no more than 1,040 hours in a calendar year.
One can certainly see where Huma might have picked up her attitude toward interpreting rules in ways that benefit herself financially after spending so much time with Hillary.
Source: American Thinker
