Chic gal pal? Mild mannered politician’s wife? Harmless clotheshorse? Saudi plant? Innocent aide? Handler?
Huma Abedin is Vice Chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. But Huma is more, much more than that. She is the person closest to the most powerful woman in American politics and perhaps the next President. Huma has been described variously as Hillary’s “body woman,” a sort of glorified go-to personal maid, gentle confidant, and by others as an Islamic spy. She may be all of these things, because as we shall see, Huma Abedin has an interesting and complex career history.
Abedin was deeply involved with the establishment of Hillary’s private email server, which was used for all of her work as Secretary of State. Now, since we know Hillary had hundreds of classified or top-secret documents on her vulnerable server (despite her early lies saying she did not), any faith in Huma’s judgment — at the very least — has been demolished. You will soon ask yourself, “how did this woman get a security clearance?”
She was born Huma Mahmood Abedin in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her father, Syed Zainul Abedin, was Indian and born in New Delhi. In the early 1970s, he was affiliated with the Muslim Students Association at Western Michigan University. The Muslim Students Association or MSA was started in 1963 by Saudi Arabia’s biggest charity, the Muslim World League, a group formed and funded by the Kingdom to spread Islam throughout the world.
Her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, was born in Pakistan. Saleha received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977.
Two years after Huma was born, the family moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and with the patronage of Abdullah Omar Naseef of the Muslim World League, founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs with offices in Saudi Arabia and London, England. In the 1980’s Syed Abedin was a counselor of the Muslim World League. After his death in 1993, his wife Saleha took over and serves as director of the IMMA (Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs) and as the editor of that organization’s academic magazine, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. More recently she still edits the Journal and is also a part of the administration of Dar Al-Hekma Women’s College.
Naseef’s connections to the entire Abedin family are significant — and, for reasons you’ll see in a moment, very troubling. As Vanity Fair wrote, during “his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League” and gives more shocking details about the Abedins:
It turns out the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs is an Abedin family business. Huma was an assistant editor there between 1996 and 2008. Her brother, Hassan, 45, is a book-review editor at the Journal and was a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, where Nasseef is chairman of the board of trustees. Huma’s sister, Heba, 26, is an assistant editor at the Journal.
That’s what all the fuss is about. Since 1962, the Muslim World League has been funded by the Saudi government to the tune of more than $1.3 billion.
Naseef, the Muslim World League, and the government of Pakistan created the Rabita Trust in 1988. Naseef was a sponsor and financial supporter of Syed Abedin’s IMMA.
Just a month after the 9/11 jihadist attack left thousands dead and brought down the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush’s Executive Order designated the Rabita Trust as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity and the Treasury Department froze its assets on October 12, 2001.
Naseef founded the Rabita Trust and remains involved with it to this day. A Treasury Department press release issued when Rabita Trust’s assets were frozen indicated that Rabita Trust is headed by Wa’el Hamza Jalaidan, one of the founders of al-Qaida with bin Laden. He was the logistics chief of bin Laden’s organization and fought on bin Laden’s side in Afghanistan. Jalaidan himself was branded a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity by the United States Treasury Department, and his assets have been frozen, as well.
But the connections between the Abedin’s Saudi benefactor, the Muslim World League, and al-Qaeda don’t end there.
In 1984, foreign mujahidin fighters were streaming in from all over the world to an office in Peshawar, Pakistan known as Maktab al-Khidamat or MAK.
MAK had been created by two Muslims to recruit and raise money: a radical cleric named Abdullah Azzam and Azzam’s protege, the infamous leader behind 9/11, the Saudi Arabian named Osama bin Laden. Before and after his creation of MAK, Azzam subsisted on money provided by the Muslim World League:
Azzam, now determined to move to Pakistan, obtained a teaching position at the newly established International Islamic University of Islamabad, whose foreign faculty were paid directly by the Muslim World League. Thus, from his arrival in Pakistan in December 1981 until his permanent move to Peshawar in 1986, the leader of the Arab Afghans subsisted on a Muslim World League salary.
Donations to MAK came from a number of “Islamic charities” such as the Saudi Red Crescent, as well as some Saudi Arabian princes and mosques.
The office that bin Laden and the other MAK founders were based out of 1984 in Peshawar was the office of the Muslim World League and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim World League was also a principal funder of MAK, bringing in Saudi funds that would eventually go to jihad against the West.
The head of the Muslim World League when their offices in Pakistan were used by Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Azzam in 1984 was none other than the Abedin’s benefactor, Abdullah Omar Naseef.
Naseef’s Rabita Trust, a subsidiary of the Muslim World League, is also connected to a U.S.-based group, called the SAAR Network, through two officers — Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef and Abdullah al-Obaid. The SAAR Network was the focus of a March 2002 raid led by United States authorities for the network’s alleged ties to al Qaeda.
This brings us back to Huma Abedin. She lived in Saudi Arabia until she was 17, while her family worked closely with Naseef. Back in the U.S., she studied at George Washington University. Two years later she, along with Monica Lewinsky, became interns at the White House under Bill and Hillary Clinton. Monica served as Bill’s intern – until their sexual relationship got out of hand and onto her blue dress – and Huma served as Hillary’s intern. In 1998, as the Lewinsky sex scandal was raging, she along with other staff girls formed a sort of shield around the humiliated First Lady.
While she worked at the White House, Abedin was an editor at the family business—the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
When Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, Huma moved up the ladder to become her aide and personal adviser.
When the towers fell in 2001, Hillary Clinton was the Senator from New York. When the assets of the Rabita Trust were frozen and the group declared a terror funder, there was no point where Sen. Clinton’s assistant Huma Abedin stepped forward to shed light on her family’s benefactor Abdullah Omar Naseef, the Muslim World League, or the Rabita Trust.
Sen. Clinton and Huma Abedin betrayed every New Yorker and every America with their silence.
Also worth noting: from April 2005 to March 2006, Huma was paid a total of $27,999.92, yet on September 18, 2006, she bought an apartment in Washington D.C. costing $649,000.
The question here is, on an annual salary of no more than $28,000, where did the money come from? We’ve caught of the greatest spies due to their spending well beyond their salaries.
At the least, what to make of someone who has lived for 17 years in Saudi Arabia, with parents who have close, long-standing ties with people connected to terrorist organizations, and then comes to the U.S. and within two years gets a job as the First Lady’s assistant?
By 2008, she was Hillary’s traveling chief of staff and was always at Hillary’s side. In 2009, she was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At this time, Huma had her name removed from the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs masthead.
In 2010, Huma married Congressman Anthony Weiner. In 2011, her husband was caught sexting — sending pictures of his erection to several women. He resigned from Congress that same year.
Huma’s luck seemed to know no end when Hillary Clinton personally signed off on a controversial deal in 2012 that allowed Huma to simultaneously work for the State Department and a private New York firm with deep ties to the Clinton family foundation. Mrs. Clinton personally signed a title change form that approved of the transition from being her Deputy Chief of Staff, to an SGE (special government employee), the equivalent of a contractor with special privileges. This allowed Huma to work for both the State department and for the Teneo Group. Some of you might remember the Teneo Group as a top consulting firm run by Bill Clinton gatekeeper Doug Band. Bill Clinton was also on the payroll of Teneo. From June 2012 to February 2013, she held four jobs. She was Hillary’s State Department aide, a consultant at Teneo Group, she worked and was paid a salary at the Clinton Foundation, and she worked as Hillary’s private personal assistant. Huma was triple-dipping.
There were several issues being investigated both internally by the State Department and Sen. Charles Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee for conflicts of interest and embezzlement. She filed inaccurate time sheets overpaying herself $10,000. Mr. Grassley has also questioned whether the deal with Abedin really met the requirements for a special government employee status. One of those requirements is that someone’s work as a contractor be different enough from the original job to warrant giving the person contractor status. Documents acquired by the Washington Times show that she told State officials that she planned to do the same kind of work as an SGE that she did as Deputy Chief of Staff.
She became part of Hillary’s transition team in 2013, helping her to return to private life. She continued her work at the Clinton Foundation and set up her own consulting firm, Zain Endeavors LLC.
On October 16, 2015, Abedin testified in a closed session before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in a session that was expected to focus on the 2012 Benghazi attack during which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. She said, “I came here today to be as helpful as I could be to the committee. I wanted to honor the service of those lost and injured in the Benghazi attacks,” adding she was “honored” to work for Clinton at State and “proud” of her service there. Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican panel member, said Abedin frequently answered questions with responses of “‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I don’t recollect.'”
There is no doubt that she and Hillary have an extremely close relationship. She has been loyal and faithful to Hillary for twenty years. “I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would be Huma.” So spoke Hillary in 2010. She even visited with Huma’s mother Saleha in Saudi Arabia in 2011, telling her that Huma’s position was “very important and sensitive.” Saleha is reportedly an outspoken advocate for genital mutilation for girls in the Islamic world.
So how has the media dealt with Huma Abedin? In short, they haven’t. The family’s critics have been attacked and labeled as conspiracy theorists.
One exception to this was the February 2016 issue of Vanity Fair. Author William D Cohen’s story, titled “Is Huma Abedin Hillary Clinton’s Secret Weapon or Her Next Big Problem?” tackled some of the issues I have gone over in this piece. It was well written, informative, and controversial. The backlash was immediate.
Media Matters for America, Hillary Clinton’s private propaganda machine, went into overdrive, putting out a response to Cohen’s article that attacked his credibility and just about every fact he had raised in his piece. According to Lee Stranahan writing in Breitbart, the Media Matters article was filled with false information and smears to protect the Clinton campaign.
This isn’t some minor aide. Huma Abedin has been at Clinton’s side for decades, and it’s time America got some answers.
Huma Abedin is Vice Chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. But Huma is more, much more than that. She is the person closest to the most powerful woman in American politics and perhaps the next President. Huma has been described variously as Hillary’s “body woman,” a sort of glorified go-to personal maid, gentle confidant, and by others as an Islamic spy. She may be all of these things, because as we shall see, Huma Abedin has an interesting and complex career history.
Abedin was deeply involved with the establishment of Hillary’s private email server, which was used for all of her work as Secretary of State. Now, since we know Hillary had hundreds of classified or top-secret documents on her vulnerable server (despite her early lies saying she did not), any faith in Huma’s judgment — at the very least — has been demolished. You will soon ask yourself, “how did this woman get a security clearance?”
She was born Huma Mahmood Abedin in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her father, Syed Zainul Abedin, was Indian and born in New Delhi. In the early 1970s, he was affiliated with the Muslim Students Association at Western Michigan University. The Muslim Students Association or MSA was started in 1963 by Saudi Arabia’s biggest charity, the Muslim World League, a group formed and funded by the Kingdom to spread Islam throughout the world.
Her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, was born in Pakistan. Saleha received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977.
Two years after Huma was born, the family moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and with the patronage of Abdullah Omar Naseef of the Muslim World League, founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs with offices in Saudi Arabia and London, England. In the 1980’s Syed Abedin was a counselor of the Muslim World League. After his death in 1993, his wife Saleha took over and serves as director of the IMMA (Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs) and as the editor of that organization’s academic magazine, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. More recently she still edits the Journal and is also a part of the administration of Dar Al-Hekma Women’s College.
Naseef’s connections to the entire Abedin family are significant — and, for reasons you’ll see in a moment, very troubling. As Vanity Fair wrote, during “his early years as the patron of the Abedins’ journal, Nasseef was the secretary-general of the Muslim World League” and gives more shocking details about the Abedins:
It turns out the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs is an Abedin family business. Huma was an assistant editor there between 1996 and 2008. Her brother, Hassan, 45, is a book-review editor at the Journal and was a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, where Nasseef is chairman of the board of trustees. Huma’s sister, Heba, 26, is an assistant editor at the Journal.
That’s what all the fuss is about. Since 1962, the Muslim World League has been funded by the Saudi government to the tune of more than $1.3 billion.
Naseef, the Muslim World League, and the government of Pakistan created the Rabita Trust in 1988. Naseef was a sponsor and financial supporter of Syed Abedin’s IMMA.
Just a month after the 9/11 jihadist attack left thousands dead and brought down the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush’s Executive Order designated the Rabita Trust as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity and the Treasury Department froze its assets on October 12, 2001.
Naseef founded the Rabita Trust and remains involved with it to this day. A Treasury Department press release issued when Rabita Trust’s assets were frozen indicated that Rabita Trust is headed by Wa’el Hamza Jalaidan, one of the founders of al-Qaida with bin Laden. He was the logistics chief of bin Laden’s organization and fought on bin Laden’s side in Afghanistan. Jalaidan himself was branded a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity by the United States Treasury Department, and his assets have been frozen, as well.
But the connections between the Abedin’s Saudi benefactor, the Muslim World League, and al-Qaeda don’t end there.
In 1984, foreign mujahidin fighters were streaming in from all over the world to an office in Peshawar, Pakistan known as Maktab al-Khidamat or MAK.
MAK had been created by two Muslims to recruit and raise money: a radical cleric named Abdullah Azzam and Azzam’s protege, the infamous leader behind 9/11, the Saudi Arabian named Osama bin Laden. Before and after his creation of MAK, Azzam subsisted on money provided by the Muslim World League:
Azzam, now determined to move to Pakistan, obtained a teaching position at the newly established International Islamic University of Islamabad, whose foreign faculty were paid directly by the Muslim World League. Thus, from his arrival in Pakistan in December 1981 until his permanent move to Peshawar in 1986, the leader of the Arab Afghans subsisted on a Muslim World League salary.
Donations to MAK came from a number of “Islamic charities” such as the Saudi Red Crescent, as well as some Saudi Arabian princes and mosques.
The office that bin Laden and the other MAK founders were based out of 1984 in Peshawar was the office of the Muslim World League and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim World League was also a principal funder of MAK, bringing in Saudi funds that would eventually go to jihad against the West.
The head of the Muslim World League when their offices in Pakistan were used by Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Azzam in 1984 was none other than the Abedin’s benefactor, Abdullah Omar Naseef.
Naseef’s Rabita Trust, a subsidiary of the Muslim World League, is also connected to a U.S.-based group, called the SAAR Network, through two officers — Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef and Abdullah al-Obaid. The SAAR Network was the focus of a March 2002 raid led by United States authorities for the network’s alleged ties to al Qaeda.
This brings us back to Huma Abedin. She lived in Saudi Arabia until she was 17, while her family worked closely with Naseef. Back in the U.S., she studied at George Washington University. Two years later she, along with Monica Lewinsky, became interns at the White House under Bill and Hillary Clinton. Monica served as Bill’s intern – until their sexual relationship got out of hand and onto her blue dress – and Huma served as Hillary’s intern. In 1998, as the Lewinsky sex scandal was raging, she along with other staff girls formed a sort of shield around the humiliated First Lady.
While she worked at the White House, Abedin was an editor at the family business—the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
When Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, Huma moved up the ladder to become her aide and personal adviser.
When the towers fell in 2001, Hillary Clinton was the Senator from New York. When the assets of the Rabita Trust were frozen and the group declared a terror funder, there was no point where Sen. Clinton’s assistant Huma Abedin stepped forward to shed light on her family’s benefactor Abdullah Omar Naseef, the Muslim World League, or the Rabita Trust.
Sen. Clinton and Huma Abedin betrayed every New Yorker and every America with their silence.
Also worth noting: from April 2005 to March 2006, Huma was paid a total of $27,999.92, yet on September 18, 2006, she bought an apartment in Washington D.C. costing $649,000.
The question here is, on an annual salary of no more than $28,000, where did the money come from? We’ve caught of the greatest spies due to their spending well beyond their salaries.
At the least, what to make of someone who has lived for 17 years in Saudi Arabia, with parents who have close, long-standing ties with people connected to terrorist organizations, and then comes to the U.S. and within two years gets a job as the First Lady’s assistant?
By 2008, she was Hillary’s traveling chief of staff and was always at Hillary’s side. In 2009, she was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At this time, Huma had her name removed from the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs masthead.
In 2010, Huma married Congressman Anthony Weiner. In 2011, her husband was caught sexting — sending pictures of his erection to several women. He resigned from Congress that same year.
Huma’s luck seemed to know no end when Hillary Clinton personally signed off on a controversial deal in 2012 that allowed Huma to simultaneously work for the State Department and a private New York firm with deep ties to the Clinton family foundation. Mrs. Clinton personally signed a title change form that approved of the transition from being her Deputy Chief of Staff, to an SGE (special government employee), the equivalent of a contractor with special privileges. This allowed Huma to work for both the State department and for the Teneo Group. Some of you might remember the Teneo Group as a top consulting firm run by Bill Clinton gatekeeper Doug Band. Bill Clinton was also on the payroll of Teneo. From June 2012 to February 2013, she held four jobs. She was Hillary’s State Department aide, a consultant at Teneo Group, she worked and was paid a salary at the Clinton Foundation, and she worked as Hillary’s private personal assistant. Huma was triple-dipping.
There were several issues being investigated both internally by the State Department and Sen. Charles Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee for conflicts of interest and embezzlement. She filed inaccurate time sheets overpaying herself $10,000. Mr. Grassley has also questioned whether the deal with Abedin really met the requirements for a special government employee status. One of those requirements is that someone’s work as a contractor be different enough from the original job to warrant giving the person contractor status. Documents acquired by the Washington Times show that she told State officials that she planned to do the same kind of work as an SGE that she did as Deputy Chief of Staff.
She became part of Hillary’s transition team in 2013, helping her to return to private life. She continued her work at the Clinton Foundation and set up her own consulting firm, Zain Endeavors LLC.
On October 16, 2015, Abedin testified in a closed session before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, in a session that was expected to focus on the 2012 Benghazi attack during which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. She said, “I came here today to be as helpful as I could be to the committee. I wanted to honor the service of those lost and injured in the Benghazi attacks,” adding she was “honored” to work for Clinton at State and “proud” of her service there. Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican panel member, said Abedin frequently answered questions with responses of “‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I don’t recollect.'”
There is no doubt that she and Hillary have an extremely close relationship. She has been loyal and faithful to Hillary for twenty years. “I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would be Huma.” So spoke Hillary in 2010. She even visited with Huma’s mother Saleha in Saudi Arabia in 2011, telling her that Huma’s position was “very important and sensitive.” Saleha is reportedly an outspoken advocate for genital mutilation for girls in the Islamic world.
So how has the media dealt with Huma Abedin? In short, they haven’t. The family’s critics have been attacked and labeled as conspiracy theorists.
One exception to this was the February 2016 issue of Vanity Fair. Author William D Cohen’s story, titled “Is Huma Abedin Hillary Clinton’s Secret Weapon or Her Next Big Problem?” tackled some of the issues I have gone over in this piece. It was well written, informative, and controversial. The backlash was immediate.
Media Matters for America, Hillary Clinton’s private propaganda machine, went into overdrive, putting out a response to Cohen’s article that attacked his credibility and just about every fact he had raised in his piece. According to Lee Stranahan writing in Breitbart, the Media Matters article was filled with false information and smears to protect the Clinton campaign.
This isn’t some minor aide. Huma Abedin has been at Clinton’s side for decades, and it’s time America got some answers.
