Revealed: Hillary Clinton wanted to give secure State Department cell phone to Anthony Weiner's 'trusted' assistant

  • Email discloses astonishing move by Secretary of State to give special secure phone to Weiner's assistant to act as a courier 
  • Huma Abedin wrote that she was going to send a secure phone by 'fedex' when Clinton emailed her to suggest using Weiner's 'trusted' assistant 
  • It is unclear why Abedin was planning to send the secure phone by public method - and why Clinton was involved in the discussion
  • Email is one published Thursday by State Department which was from Clinton's secret server and was sent in 2010
  • Shows how Clinton trusted Weiner, now Abedin's estranged husband, who disgraced himself in series of sexting scandals and is now and FBI target
  • Agency probe in to his sexting a girl, 15, after DailyMail.com revelation, led to discovery of bombshell Clintonemail.com messages on his laptop  

Hillary Clinton and a senior aide discussed sending a secure cell phone to the secretary of state by FedEx or a personal courier - who worked for Anthony Weiner, according to emails released Thursday. 

The astonishing revelation is the latest from WikiLeaks and underlines just how much Weiner was trusted by Clinton.

Weiner is now the target of an FBI investigation after sexting a 15-year-old - leading to the bombshell revelation that his estranged wife Huma Abedin is also being looked at because 650,000 of her emails were found on a laptop he handed over to agents.

The exchange from 2010 begins with Clinton confidante Huma Abedin telling her boss that she would mail the secure phone from Washington before her husband, then-Congressman Anthony Weiner, takes her to the airport. Clinton asks if one of Weiner's assistants could make the delivery.

Hillary Clinton (pictured in 2010) talked to Huma Abedin about Fedexing a secure cell phone to her while she was secretary of state - or asking a personal courier who worked for Anthony Weiner to do it

Off the trail: Huma Abedin has not been at Clinton's side since the revelation that the FBI has found emails 'relevant' to the Clinton email probe on a computer they seized from Anthony Weiner

'OK I will (redacted) just fedex secure cell phone from dc. Anthony leaving office to bring me to airport now so hopefully will make it just in time,' Abedin writes in the afternoon of Aug. 2, 2010.

'Maybe one of Anthony's trusted staff could deliver secure phone?' Clinton responds four hours later.

The email does not explain how Clinton had become separate from the phone.

The State Department said either approach - a delivery company like Fedex, or a courier - would have been acceptable, if the telephone was rendered inoperable for the journey. 

The emails show the degree of trust Clinton had for Weiner before he was hit by scandal. Abedin is perhaps Clinton's closest aide and Bill Clinton officiated at her wedding to Weiner.

Abedin recently separated from Weiner after the latest in a series of sexually explicit text messages surfaced from the one-time rising star of the Democratic Party.

Clinton and Abedin wrote to each other using private email addresses outside the State Department's system, a practice that has roiled the Democratic nominee's campaign for the presidency. 

Clinton has apologized for using a private email account connected to a server in the basement of her New York home. 

The FBI announced last week it was examining emails found on a computer seized from Weiner during its unrelated investigation of his sexually explicit texts to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, which were first revealed by DailyMail.com.

Weiner resigned his seat in Congress in 2011 after accidentally posting on Twitter a picture of himself in his underwear, which he intended as a private message to a woman who was not his wife. 

Longtime Clinton aide Abedin recently separated from Weiner after the latest in a series of sexually explicit text messages surfaced from the one-time rising star of the Democratic Party. Abedin is perhaps Clinton's closest aide

Seen together: Weiner is seen campaigning for Clinton to become senator in October 2000

In 2013, the publication of further messages killed his campaign for New York mayor.

It is unclear where Clinton was at the time of the emails. State Department schedules listed no public events for her between July 27 and Aug. 2, 2010.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said it was unclear how the phone might have been delivered, or if it was at all. He said officials wouldn't speculate.

But Toner stressed that the options mentioned by Clinton and Abedin would have been appropriate, if the necessary safeguards were taken.

'In 2010, secure cell phones were available to State Department employees, and they could be configured in such a way as to render them suitable for transport. 

'When configured in this manner, the device would be inoperable until paired with additional components,' Toner told The Associated Press.

A secure cell phone would be shipped through a carrier that provides tracking, like FedEx, and an individual outside the State Department would be allowed to deliver the device.

The use of secure cell phones is commonplace among State Department staff when traveling to countries with advanced cyberespionage capacities, such as China or Russia.

This is what happens when you give Weiner a phone: The sexting obsessed pervert was undone by a series of scandals including sending a picture of himself in bed - with him and Abedin's son at their side - and then he was revealed to have sent this image to a 15=year-old

When the FBI interviewed Abedin as part of its emails probe, she told investigators that Clinton's team 'would sometime use secure cell phones when they were traveling but they were not used on every trip.'

'Secure phones were only used when traveling in hostile operational environments,' Abedin said, according to the FBI's notes of the interview. 'The secure phones were maintained by Diplomatic Security (DS) and would be provided to the team.'

The exchange over the secure phone was among 1,280 pages of emails that the department released Thursday. 

The department received the documents from the FBI and received a court order to release them under the Freedom of Information Act. 

The documents weren't among the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton provided to the department in 2014 and which have already been published online.

Of those previously released, the department classified more than 2,000 emails, mostly at the 'confidential' and next-highest 'secret' levels. Twenty-two emails were withheld entirely from publication on grounds that they were 'top secret.'

No new classifications were made Thursday. Many of the new documents are 'near duplicates' of those previously released, Toner said.

FBI director James Comey announced last week the agency was examining emails found on a computer seized from Weiner

What makes them stand out from other emails - especially the WikiLeaks disclosure from John Podesta's Gmail - is their mention of Weiner.

In the Podesta files he barely features, except for a reference to a revelation that police became involved in 2011 when he and a 17-year-old girl communicated privately online.

But Weiner was long a part of the Clinton circle thanks to, first, his status as a New York representative when Clinton was senator for the state, and then as Huma Abedin's husband.

The email disclosed Thursday was sent the month after their wedding, which was conducted by Bill Clinton.

It was reportedly Hillary Clinton who suggested that they go on a date.

Abedin ended the marriage in August when yet another sexting scandal hit the by then disgraced ex-congressman and failed mayoral candidate - this time with him sending a picture of himself in bed, clearly aroused, with his son beside him.

A month later Weiner as hit by the DailyMail.com revelations about his sexting a 15-year-old. He is now in rehab to try to deal with his cybersex addiction.

The FBI investigation into that led to the discovery of emails 'relevant' to the closed probe into Clinton and her staff's handling of classified material on her Clintonemail.com server.

When that bombshell was disclosed to Congress last Friday by FBI director James Comey, Abedin was on the campaign trail but has been off it since then.

Clinton, who had once called her a surrogate daughter, called her 'one of my staffers' as she addressed the revelation. 

Abedin was due to take part in a fundraiser in Washington DC on Thursday with Anna Wintour, but it is unclear if she will ever again be back at Clinton's side before Tuesday's election.

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