Judicial Watch finds 18 more of Huma Abedin’s classified emails in her estranged husband’s laptop

Huma Abedin walks past her boss Hillary R. Clinton embracing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.) during the 2016 presidential campaign. Abedin was has been one of Clinton’s most senior personal aides for more than 20 years. (Photo courtesy of Clinton’s campaign Facebook page)

The leading Washington-based government watchdog revealed Thursday that at least 18 classified emails were discovered in the nearly 800 documents released by the State Department from the laptop of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma M. Abedin.

“Judicial Watch’s work in federal court holding the government accountable to the rule of law has forced the State Department to finally release these documents,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

“The classified information on Weiner’s laptop is part of a pattern of the mishandling national security by Clinton and her aides,” he said. “The Weiner emails emphasize the need for the Justice Department to conduct a fresh, serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law.”

In the last days for the 2016 presidential campaign, FBI Director James B. Comey Jr., notified Congress that the bureau was investigating the laptop for possible mishandling of classified government documents or correspondence. Before the election, Comey then announced that there was no wrongdoing involved with the materials found on the laptop.

Abedin has been former first lady Hillary R. Clinton’s closest confidante, since their days in the White House’s East Wing together. The 41-year-old Michigan native has worked in the intervening years for Teneo, the consulting firm run by Douglas Band, a courtier of President William J. Clinton, along with the Clinton Foundation and senior roles as a personal aide to the former first lady’s 2000 Senate campaign, and her runs presidential runs in 2008 and 2016.

During the former first lady’s tenure as secretary of state, Abedin serves as her deputy chief of staff with an extraordinary arrangement, where she did not report for work at the department’s Washington Foggy Bottom headquarters. Instead, she worked out of her New York City home, along with maintaining consulting contracts with the Clinton Foundation.

The aide was also one of few people aware that Clinton was conducting all of her official State Department business on a private email account and server, in addition to having her own email address on the same private server.

Judicial Watch said its own analysis of the materials found on the Weiner laptop found that twice classified material was sent by Abedin on her clintonemail.com account to Weiner’s laptop Nov. 25, 2010 and Nov. 26, 2010. The first email dealt with expected WikiLeaks postings with Prince Saud, the long-serving foreign minister of Saudi Arabia. The second email was related to a phone call between United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Abdullah bin Zayed and a Jeff.

JW speculated that Jeff was Jeffrey Feltman, then the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who is now the undersecretary of the United Nations.

Abedin married the one-time protege of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.) in 2010 and in 2017 announced her intention to end the marriage.

During Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Tony Goldwyn, star of ABC’s “Scandal,” spoke up for Clinton at multiple rallies. In March of 2017, the married Goldwyn became linked with Abedin after the two spent the day together at Disneyland with Abedin’s son with Weiner–and pop music producer David Foster–two months before Weiner began his 21-month sentence for transferring obscene matter to a minor.

Fitton said he was pleased that the Justice Department was reopening its investigation into who the former first lady and her associated handled classified information and correspondence.

“The Justice Department has reportedly at least begun asking questions about the Clinton classified material,” he said. “Judicial Watch has no doubt that the Justice Department is taking these steps due to the ongoing disclosures of Clinton email misconduct from Judicial Watch’s lawsuits.”

The new revelations add to the five classified emails among 147 new Abedin work-related documents State released Dec. 29.

In previous releases by the State Department, 13 emails with classified information were discovered on the former congressman’s laptop that related to Saudi Arabia, the World Court at the Hague, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the identity of a CIA official, Malawi, the civil war in Syria, Lebanon, Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

A July 9, 2011 email was found on Weiner’s laptop from Abedin’s Blackberry with classified information regarding a planned call with the secretary of state and  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Anything else about the email is a guess, since page released by State was completely redacted.

Redacted July 9, 2011 email from the Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Another email for, this one sent Nov. 25, 2011, described Feltman’s report of Egypt’s take on the talks between Hamas and the PLO.

All of this takes on a new level of concern in the context of Abedin’s use of the private Clinton email service to give out passwords, which was posted by Judicial Watch in September.

In September 2017 Judicial Watch made public Abedin’s use of the private Clinton email system for the transmission of sensitive passwords. The episode began with State’s Monica Hanley issuing to Abedin a government laptop and her security fob, along with her usernames and passwords for logging into State Department and other government websites.

Abedin forward all of this logon information to her private email account, according to Judicial Watch.

Click here for more information about Judicial Watch and the trove of documents related to Hillary R. Clinton and her and her team’s handling of classified materials and correspondence Judicial Watch has secured through its Freedom of Information Act requests and its followup lawsuits for those requests.

Included in that trove are 627 emails withheld from the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department.

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