It would have been perfectly logical if [Huma Abedin] had said, “I’m out of here.” Any woman could have understood that.
—Huma Abedin’s friend Rory Tahari
It was the spring of 2012 and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on a late-night flight to Beijing.
As always, Huma Abedin, Hillary’s longest-serving aide, was close at hand.
Huma was an attractive and stylish woman with a murky personal background. She was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and moved to Saudi Arabia with her Muslim parents when she was two years old. She grew up speaking English, Urdu (a language associated with the Muslim region of Hindustan), and Arabic.
She didn’t return to America until her late teens, when she was admitted to George Washington University. There, she became a member of the executive board of the Muslim Students Association, which was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist group whose stated goal was to instill the Koran and Sunnah (a major source of Islamic law) as the “sole reference point for . . . ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community . . . and state.”
As a college intern in 1996, Huma was assigned to the first lady’s office in the Clinton White House, where she immediately came to the attention of Hillary.
For the next twelve years—from 1996 until 2008, when Hillary ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination—Huma wore two hats: she was Hillary’s “body woman,” her do-it-all personal assistant, and she was the assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Her connection to that publication raised eyebrows in conservative circles, because the Journal was founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a notorious financier of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Huma’s Pakistani mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, served as a representative of the Muslim World League, a fundamentalist group, and became the editor in chief of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Some Islamist-watchers, like Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, have written about Huma’s “extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood . . . whose self-declared mission is ‘destroying Western civilization from within.’”
As “Hillary’s shadow,” Huma kept tabs on Hillary’s personal needs—lodging, transportation, meals, and snacks. She made sure Hillary was dressed appropriately for the weather. And she carried Hillary’s BlackBerry, which would become a major prop in Hillary’s e-mail drama.
Over the years, the two women developed a strong personal bond, and Huma rose in the ranks to become Hillary’s deputy chief of staff. More than an aide, Huma was, with the exception of Bill and Chelsea, the closest person to Hillary. Hillary never went anywhere without Huma.
Despite Huma’s twenty-year relationship with Hillary, she had managed to remain largely under the public radar until the spring of 2011, when her husband, Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, was unmasked as a serial pervert who sent lewd photos of himself via Twitter.
During the ensuing scandal, which forced Weiner to resign from Congress, Hillary counseled the now-pregnant Huma on how to deal with her wayward husband—a subject on which Hillary was of course a world-class expert. Not surprisingly, she urged Huma to follow her example and save her marriage.
Huma listened to Hillary and stuck by the disgraced Weiner.
People said that Hillary treated Huma as an adopted daughter. But she went much further than that. Following Huma’s maternity leave, Hillary allowed her to continue drawing a State Department salary of $135,000 as a “special government employee” while at the same time she sat on the board of the Clinton Foundation and worked as a $355,000-a-year outside adviser to Teneo, a strategic consulting firm founded by Doug Band, himself a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Huma’s double dipping was certainly unethical if not downright illegal. Some people speculated that Huma needed the money because Anthony Weiner was out of a job and broke. Others said she needed the dough to support her pricey lifestyle, which included designer frocks by Oscar de la Renta, Catherine Malandrino, and Prada, and handbags by Yves Saint Laurent. And some people said that Huma had simply caught the money bug from Hillary.
Huma’s years of loyal service were richly rewarded when Hillary announced that she was running for president and anointed Huma as one of her chief surrogates.
“For all intents and purposes,” a Clinton campaign aide told Politico, “[Huma is] No. 3 on the campaign, after [campaign chairman John] Podesta and [campaign manager Robby] Mook.”