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Huma Abedin
Abedin, October 2010
Born	Huma Mahmood Abedin (1976-07-28) July 28, 1976 (age 48) Kalamazoo, Michigan, U.S.
Education	George Washington University
Occupation	Aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton
Spouse	Anthony Weiner (2010–present)
Children	1
Parent(s)	Syed Zainul Abedin Saleha Mahmood Abedin
Relatives	Siblings: Hassan Abedin Heba Abedin

Huma Mahmood Abedin (born July 28, 1976) is an American political staffer. She has been a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton, and was U.S. Secretary of State Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department, and before that, traveling chief of staff and "body woman" during Clinton's campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. She is married to Anthony Weiner, a former U.S. Representative from New York.

Abedin serves as vice chairwoman of Clinton's 2016 campaign for President.

Early years

Abedin's father, Syed Zainul Abedin, was Indian, and her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is Pakistani. Both of her parents were educators. Her father, born in New Delhi, India on April 2, 1928, was an Islamic and Middle Eastern scholar of Indian descent, who founded his own institute devoted to Western-Eastern and interfaith understanding and reconciliation, and published a journal focusing on Muslim minorities living in the diaspora. He graduated from Aligarh Muslim University in 1947 with a master's degree in English literature, and joined the department's faculty as a lecturer. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He died in 1993. Her mother also received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and is currently an associate professor of sociology at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah.

Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At the age of two, Abedin moved with her family to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she was raised and lived until returning to the United States for college. Abedin traveled frequently during her childhood and teenage years and attended a British girls' school.

At age 18, Abedin entered George Washington University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Career

While a student at George Washington University, Abedin began working as an intern in the White House in 1996, assigned to then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. In 1998, she was also an assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. For several years, she served as the back-up to Clinton's personal aide, and officially took over as Clinton’s aide and personal advisor during Clinton's successful 2000 U.S. Senate campaign in New York, and later worked as traveling chief of staff and "body woman" during Clinton's unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Writing in Vogue during the 2007 campaign, Rebecca Johnson called her "Hillary's secret weapon" and noted that what seemed to motivate Abedin was not the details of policy or political horse-racing, but rather "the way that politicians are uniquely invested with the power to help individuals—as with, say, the woman whose legs were badly broken by a piece of plane fuselage on September 11," whom Abedin and Clinton visited in the hospital. Abedin told Johnson, "To me, that’s one of the blessings of this job. In some tiny, tiny way I am part of history, but I am also able to help people." According to a number of Clinton associates, Abedin is also a trusted advisor to Clinton, particularly on the Middle East, and has become known for that expertise. “She is a person of enormous intellect with in-depth knowledge on a number of issues—especially issues pertaining to the Middle East,” said Senator John McCain.

In 2009, Abedin was appointed deputy chief of staff to Clinton in the State Department, under a "special government employee" arrangement created by the department which allowed her to work for private clients as a consultant while also serving as an adviser to the Secretary of State. Under this arrangement, she did consultant work for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm whose clients included Coca-Cola and MF Global, and served as a paid consultant to the Clinton Foundation, while continuing her role as body woman to Clinton. The New York Times reported that an associate of Abedin's said that the arrangement also allowed her to work from her home in New York City, rather than at the State Department’s headquarters in Washington, to be able to spend more time with her child and husband. After leaving her post at the State Department in 2013, Abedin served as director of the transition team that helped Clinton return to private life, continued her work for the Clinton Foundation, and set up a private consulting firm, Zain Endeavors LLC, registered with the New York Department of State.

In 2010, Abedin was included in Time magazine's "40 under 40" list of a "new generation of civic leaders" and "rising stars of American politics." At a celebration before Abedin's wedding to Anthony Weiner, Clinton said in a speech, "I only have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would Huma."

Abedin serves as vice chairwoman for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for president, and continues in her role as personal assistant to Clinton.

Congressional inquiries

Outside employment while at State Department

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, raised questions about Abedin's work as a State Department employee, concerning the fact that she held four jobs from June 2012 to February 2013. These included serving as a part-time aide to Clinton at the State Department, while also working as a consultant to private clients for the consulting firm Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm run by Douglas Band, a longtime aide to former president Bill Clinton. At the time, she was also being paid a salary for work at the Clinton Foundation, and working as Hillary Clinton's personal assistant. The State Department and Abedin both responded, with the State Department indicating that it uses special government employees routinely "to provide services and expertise that executive agencies require", and Abedin stating that she did not provide any government information or inside information gained from her State Department job to her private employers. Grassley said he found the letters unresponsive. In July 2015, Grassley released information indicating that the State Department’s inspector general had found that Abedin was overpaid by almost $10,000 for unused leave time when she left the government, resulting from violations of the rules governing vacation and sick leave during her tenure on the payroll as a Federal employee in the department. Abedin's attorneys said that she had learned in May that the Department’s inspector general had found that she improperly collected $9,857 for periods when she was on vacation or leave, and responded with a 12-page letter contesting the findings, and formally requested an administrative review of the investigation’s conclusions. Her lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, told The New York Times that the inspector general's report showed that Abedin worked during her maternity leave and had thus earned that pay.

Employment records and emails

In October 2015, a federal court in Washington heard arguments on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Judicial Watch for records related to Abedin. Judicial Watch asked to make Ms. Abedin’s emails and employment records public, asking for details of the arrangement under which Abedin was designated a "special government employee," allowing her to do outside consulting work while also on the federal payroll. On October 6, the State Department said it would be able to hand over 69 pages of emails in response to the FOIA request.

In 2015, emails by Abedin became part of the FBI investigation and the controversy concerning Hillary Clinton's private email account while Secretary of State, when it was determined that potentially classified emails from Abedin and aide Jake Sullivan relating to the 2012 Benghazi attack and its aftermath had been sent through Clinton's private, non-government server.

House Benghazi Committee testimony

On October 16, 2015, Abedin testified in 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. The committee had previously heard closed-door testimony from two other Clinton aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, in September 2015, and former Secretary Clinton appeared before the panel in a public hearing on October 22.

The Republican-led committee's top Democrat, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, questioned the panel's decision to hear testimony from Abedin, arguing that her knowledge of details at the time of the attacks was minimal. Representative Mike Pompeo, Republican of Kansas, defended the decision to interview Abedin, saying: "Ms. Abedin was a senior official at the State Department at all of the relevant times. Every witness has a different set of knowledge." Although there were political tensions surrounding Abedin's appearance, the proceedings were friendly, and after her almost eight hours of testimony, Abedin said: "I came here today to be as helpful as I could be to the committee."

Personal life

Abedin is a Muslim. In addition to English, Abedin speaks fluent Arabic.

On July 10, 2010, Abedin married then-Congressman Anthony Weiner. Former President Bill Clinton performed the wedding ceremony. In December 2011, Abedin gave birth to a boy, Jordan Zain Weiner.

In June 2011, Abedin's husband became embroiled in a Twitter photo scandal. In a press conference where he admitted to sexting, Weiner said he had revealed his online relationships to his wife before their marriage. Regarding the revelations,Weiner said, "She was very unhappy, she was very disappointed, and she told me as much. And she also told me that she loved me and we're going to get through this." The Twitter photo scandal led to Weiner's resignation from Congress on June 23, 2011. In a press conference on July 23, 2013, Abedin spoke for the first time at an event for her husband's campaign in the New York City's mayoral primary election. The press conference took place after new revelations had emerged regarding more sexting that Weiner had with a woman in mid-2012, after his resignation from the House. At the conference, Abedin discussed the challenges of her marriage and said "I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him." Weiner went on to lose the mayoral primary election.

Hillary Clinton was described in the New York Times and Fox News as a mentor and mother figure to Huma. In 2010, at Abedin's wedding to Weiner, Clinton said: "I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would (be) Huma." During a trip that Clinton and Abedin made to Saudi Arabia, Abedin’s own mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, said to Clinton: "Hillary, you have spent more time with my daughter than I have in the past 15 years. I’m jealous of you!"

Conspiracy theories

In a letter dated June 13, 2012, to the State Department Inspector General, five Republican members of Congress—Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas J. Rooney of Florida, and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia—claimed that Abedin "has three family members–her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations." The five members of Congress claimed that Abedin had "immediate family connections to foreign extremist organizations" which they said were "potentially disqualifying conditions for obtaining a security clearance" and questioned why Abedin had not been "disqualified for a security clearance."

The claims in the letter were widely rejected and condemned, and were sometimes labeled as conspiracy theories. The Washington Post editorial board called the allegations "paranoid," a "baseless attack," and a "smear." The Seattle Times compared the letter's accusations to the witch-hunts of Joseph McCarthy, calling the claims "unsupported ... assaults by an unthinking zealot." The Anti-Defamation League condemned the letter as well, referring to it as "conspiratorial" and calling upon the Representatives involved to "stop trafficking in anti-Muslim conspiracy theories." The conservative National Review supported the allegations, saying "Saleha Abedin is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to supporters of violent jihad."

The letter was criticized by, among others, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, the first Muslim member of Congress, who called the allegation "reprehensible." Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, also rejected the allegations, saying "The letter and the report offer not one instance of an action, a decision or a public position that Huma has taken while at the State Department that would lend credence to the charge that she is promoting anti-American activities within our government....These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit." Republican Senators Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina similarly condemned the letter. Bachmann's former campaign manager Edward Rollins said the allegations were "extreme and dishonest" and called for Bachmann to apologize to Abedin. However, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich defended Bachmann, saying: "There weren't allegations, there was a question" and "the question ought to be asked." In addition, Eric Cantor defended Rep. Michele Bachmann’s questioning of Abedin, saying that Bachmann's "concern was about the security of the country."

In popular culture

In Saturday Night Live's 2015–16 season premiere on October 3, 2015, SNL cast member Cecily Strong played Abedin in a comedy sketch, which included cast member Kate McKinnon performing a parody of Hillary Clinton, along with the real Hillary Clinton playing a bartender serving drinks to McKinnon as her doppelgänger and Strong's Abedin, and Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton.

References

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External links

• Collected news and coverage at The Washington Post

Template:Persondata

• 1976 births
• Living people
• American Muslims
• American politicians of Indian descent
• American politicians of Pakistani descent
• American women of Asian descent in politics
• George Washington University alumni
• Hillary Clinton
• New York Democrats
• People from Jeddah
• People from Kalamazoo, Michigan
• Spouses of members of the United States House of Representatives
• Spouses of New York politicians
• American expatriates in Saudi Arabia