U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2012 / AP
Senior Hillary Clinton aides agreed the campaign should accept political donations from lobbyists working on behalf of foreign governments, according to the latest batch of WikiLeaks emails released Sunday.
Campaign manager Robby Mook replied to an email chain discussing the campaign’s policy toward accepting contributions from foreign registered agents that he was "OK just taking the money and dealing with any attacks," the New York Post reported.
Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri responded, "Take the money!!"
Dennis Cheng, national finance director for the Clinton campaign, began the email thread on April 13, 2015, just one day after the former secretary of state announced her decision to run for the White House.
"We really need make a policy decision on this soon–whether we are allowing those lobbying on behalf of foreign governments to raise $ for the campaign. Or case by case," Cheng wrote.
Campaign staffer Karuna Seshasai wrote that if they were to assess donors individually, "I’d want to specifically raise: Tony Podesta (Iraq, Azerbaijan, Egypt), Ben Barnes (Libya), John Merrigan (UAE), Wyeth Weidman (Libya), and Mike Driver (UAE connections)."
The donations brought in at least $700,000 for the Clinton campaign.
Clinton appears to have been unaware of the decision. Longtime aide Huma Abedin wrote to Mook a week after the exchanges that Clinton found out through the paper that the campaign had decided to accept donations subject to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
