Donors sought access to Hillary Clinton

Clinton has said about 30,000 personal emails were deleted from the server. Photo / AP

A sports executive who was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation and whose firm paid former US President Bill Clinton millions of dollars in consulting fees wanted help getting a visa for a British football player with a criminal past.

The crown prince of Bahrain, whose Government gave more than US$50,000 to the Clintons' charity and who participated in its glitzy annual conference, wanted a last-minute meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. U2 rocker and philanthropist Bono, also a regular at foundation events, wanted high-level help broadcasting a live link to the International Space Station during concerts.

In each case, according to emails released yesterday from Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State, the requests were directed to Clinton's deputy chief of staff and confidante, Huma Abedin, who engaged with other top aides and sometimes Clinton herself about how to respond.

The emails show that, in these and similar cases, the donors did not always get what they wanted, particularly when they sought anything more than a meeting.

But the exchanges, among 725 pages of correspondence from Abedin disclosed as part of a lawsuit by the conservative group Judicial Watch, illustrate the way the Clintons' international network of friends and donors was able to get access to Hillary Clinton and her inner circle during her tenure running the State Department.

The release of the correspondence follows previous disclosures of internal emails showing a similar pattern of access for foundation contributors.

Judicial Watch said the release from Abedin's inbox included 20 previously undisclosed exchanges with Clinton that were not included in the approximately 55,000 pages of correspondence the former Secretary gave to State. Also yesterday, the State Department said the FBI had turned over nearly 15,000 emails and other documents that investigators discovered during a probe of Clinton's email setup that she had not previously returned to State.

Clinton has said about 30,000 personal emails were deleted from the server. The FBI batch includes emails and attachments that were sent directly to or from Clinton, or that were part of email chains.

FBI Director James B. Comey has said there is no evidence that emails were purposefully deleted with an intent to conceal them, and a State Department spokesman said that some of the records included emails that were purely personal.