Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IO) has been investigating Abedin’s activities as a paid consultant while she was still working for Clinton toward the end of her tenure. In June, 2012, Abedin changed her employment status at the State Department from being a full time employee with the title of deputy chief of staff to being a “special government employee,” a type of contractor that allowed her to take on private clients in addition to her government job that included Hillary Clinton’s post-State Department transition team, the William J. Clinton Foundation, and Teneo Holdings, a firm run by Clinton confidante Doug Band.
Abedin’s change in employment status was exposed in a June article in Politico, which reported that Abedin and Weiner reported income of $490,000 in calendar year 2012, $360,000 of which represented a combination of both of their consulting incomes.
Grassley has been pressing the State Department and Abedin to answer a slew of questions over the arrangement ever since.
“It appears that Teneo may have been compensating Ms. Abedin for gathering information from government sources for the purpose of informing investment decisions of her clients – or in other words, political intelligence,” Grassley wrote in a June 13 letter. “This raises important questions about whether her dual role was adequately disclosed to government officials who may have provided her information without realizing that she was being paid by private investors to gather information.”