Chelsea Clinton Used Foundation Money for Her Wedding: Emails

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the U.S. presidential democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, used money from the family’s controversial foundation in order to pay for her wedding in 2010, emails leaked by WikiLeaks showed.

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In an email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta dated January 2012, Doug Band, former President Clinton’s personal assistant since the 1990s, accused the former first daughter of “using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade.”

Band himself managed the Clinton Foundation for years before Chelsea took an important role at the charity in 2011 and shortly after she launched an investigation into the management of finances under Band’s leadership.

The email was sent by an angry Band over the investigation, calling on Podesta to tell her to back off, calling her move against him “not smart” in the leaked email. “I hope that you will speak to her and end this. Once we go down this road.”

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Podesta replied, “You are perfecting your skills for understatement.” Band’s email is one of more than 50,000 leaked emails hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account and released by WikiLeaks over the past month.

Band also made a reference to how the Clintons used a prominent Clinton Foundation donor to suppress critical press coverage of the wedding and its financial sources.

The news comes as the latest report indicates how the Clintons misused the charity to gain trade favors with donors by receiving millions from them meant for international aid. Instead, the money was used for personal events and political access while the former first lady was part of the government.

In August, emails released from Hillary Clinton's time as U.S. secretary of state revealed that her staff helped grant access to Clinton Foundation donors, including for the Bahraini al-Khalifa monarchy accused of killing and torturing hundreds of people during the 2011 Arab Spring-inspired uprising.

The news comes a few days before the Nov. 8 presidential elections in which Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump are almost tied in polls, with Clinton having less than a 2 percent lead.