WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton tapped a former State Department employee to help respond to various inquires from Capitol Hill after the 2012 fatal attacks in Benghazi, Libya, at the same time he was being paid by his law firm.
Richard Verma was designated a “special government employee,” allowing him to work at State as well as at Steptoe & Johnson law firm, according to an email he wrote that was obtained by Citizens United, a conservative group that has filed lawsuits to access records from the State Department.
The arrangement has prompted additional questions about the way the federal program at the State Department was used while Clinton served as secretary of state.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has long been concerned about the use of the program, which was supposed to be designed to allow the government to bring aboard outside talent to fill voids in its expertise.
“It’s not clear that responding to congressional inquiries is how the special employee designation was meant to be used,” Grassley said Thursday. “It was designed to get special expertise that the government can’t get in-house. Agencies already have congressional affairs staff who are employed to help respond to congressional inquiries. The State Department has stretched the definition in several cases.”
A similar arrangement involving another of Clinton’s closest confidants, Huma Abedin, led the State Department inspector general to launch a review into the department’s use of the designation and, apparently, whether it was abused in the hiring of Abedin, who was working at the State Department and Teneo, a company that provides political intelligence to clients.
In August, Grassley asked the FBI whether the inspector general’s office had notified the bureau of any inquiry into Abedin that had evolved into “a full-fledged criminal investigation.” The FBI referred Grassley to the inspector general.
The inspector general’s office declined to comment Thursday on the inquiry.
“The special government employee designation is not limited to specific types of position descriptions,” State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach said.
