For decades, as her husband climbed the ladder of American politics from Arkansas attorney general to the state’s governor to two terms as president of the United States, Hillary Clinton was the woman behind the man, providing private counsel and assistance.
As Bill Clinton’s second term was winding down, Hillary set her sights on a political run of her own, eyeing the New York Senate seat soon to be vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Needing her own eyes and ears, Clinton turned to a young woman who had begun working for her a number of years prior as a 19-year-old college student, and asked her to take the job of aide. Huma Abedin has been with Clinton ever since, from the Senate to her failed campaign for the presidency in 2008, to the State Department, to Hillary’s 2016 presidential run.
A lowly aide no longer, Abedin, 39, is now the vice chairwoman of the Clinton campaign, and perhaps more importantly, the closest adviser of the woman with a significant chance of becoming the next president of the United States. It also means she has been drawn into the controversy surrounding her boss’s use of a private email server to conduct official government business. Indeed, she’s become so significant that even Donald Trump has this week taken political potshots at her.
Abedin was born to American-educated academics – her father briefly taught at Western Michigan University. She spent her childhood in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where her parents were both college professors. Her father, Syed Zainul, was a scholar of Islam who was born in India, and received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Her mother, Saleha Mahmood, was a sociologist who also attended Penn for graduate school, and is currently Dar Al-Hekma’s vice president.
Abedin learnt fluent Arabic as a child. She dreamed of becoming a globe-trotting journalist, and enrolled at George Washington University in Washington. Abedin applied for a White House position in 1996, and hoped to be assigned to the press office. Instead, she was to work for Melanne Verveer, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff. The disappointed Abedin complained to her mother, who told her to make the best of the opportunity: “Take a chance. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. And don’t fall in love with Plan A.”
Abedin rapidly became an indispensable aide and ally for Clinton. She was tireless, perpetually unruffled and could be trusted to remain discreet – a trait holding particular value in the often-embattled world of the Clintons. She was Clinton’s body woman, responsible for fetching Diet Cokes and jalapeño peppers, carrying her bags, and getting her where she needed to be. A fellow Clinton aide said of her: “If the air-conditioning is too cold, Huma is there with the shawl. She’s always thinking three steps ahead of Hillary.”
As Clinton told Vogue magazine in 2007: "Huma Abedin has the energy of a woman in her 20s, the confidence of a woman in her 30s, the experience of a woman in her 40s and the grace of a woman in her 50s … I am lucky to have had her on my team for a decade now."
Abedin was credited with managing the often fiendishly difficult logistics of Clinton’s public appearances. With her Saudi childhood and Muslim heritage, she was also a trusted adviser on Middle East policy and other issues. In photographs taken during the 2008 presidential campaign or during Clinton’s time at the State Department, Abedin can almost always be seen in the background, clutching Sharpies and speech notes, and holding books open to be signed. And when Clinton became secretary of state, Abedin served as her deputy chief of staff at the State Department.
Shortly after Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000, Abedin went out on a date with a young congressman from Queens named Anthony Weiner. The date was a disaster, with Abedin ditching him part way through. During Clinton's Senate years, they would regularly encounter Weiner at events. "We'd show up at some pancake breakfast on a Sunday," Abedin remembered for a New York Times profile, "and Hillary would be going up to the podium, and Anthony would be walking offstage ... 'I warmed 'em up for you, Hillary. They're all set, teed up to go.' Hillary would always laugh, and I would think: 'My God, he's such a jerk.'"
Weiner eventually convinced Abedin to try again after he ably served as an intermediary between Clinton and Senator Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. A romance began, and the couple married in 2010, with none other than Bill Clinton serving as the officiant. The former president said that he had only one daughter, but if he had a second, she would be Abedin.
Abedin’s boss struggled through her fair share of controversies, but perhaps the most scarring was the revelation of her husband’s affair with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and the impeachment trial that followed. Abedin had to go through her own Hillary-esque scandal, when Weiner was discovered to have sent out graphic pictures of himself to women via Twitter.
Weiner claimed to have been hacked, then admitted he had sent the photographs. Abedin, secretly pregnant with the couple’s first child, was suddenly thrust into the white heat of the media scrum, asked all the questions once asked of her boss: What had she known? When had she known it? And why would she stay with her husband?
Two days after the press conference at which Weiner admitted his involvement, Abedin was on a plane to Abu Dhabi, where the secretary of state was visiting. Her mother and older brother were waiting for her in her room at Emirates Palace, where they talked through the crisis.
Abedin stayed with her husband, and the loyalty of the Clinton team during the intensely stressful time further cemented her commitment to the cause. She also received governmental permission to hold down a side job consulting for Teneo, a firm co-founded by Bill Clinton’s former aide Doug Band, providing strategic assistance and helping to plan major events.
Abedin was so trusted that she continued working for Clinton even as her husband attempted an unsuccessful comeback, running for mayor of New York in 2013. "She loves Hillary. She would die for Hillary," the Clinton donor Marc Lasry told The New York Times. "Really, what she's always looking at is: 'What's in the best interest of Hillary?'"
In the run-up to the 2012 election, five Republican members of Congress, including the former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, drafted a letter to five American national security agencies asking them to investigate potential infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood of the American government. The letter argued that Abedin, whose “position affords her routine access to the Secretary [Hillary Clinton] and to policy-making”, was related to Muslim Brotherhood activists, and was, by inference, a potential Islamist traitor at the highest reaches of the government. Prominent Republicans such as Senator John McCain came out in Abedin’s defence, and the unproven allegations mostly faded away.
Since Clinton left the State Department, Abedin has returned to her private advisory position, assisting her boss with the promotion of her book Hard Choices, orchestrating a plan for the 2014 midterms, and now beginning the long-anticipated roll-out of the Clinton presidential campaign as vice chairwoman.
Abedin’s job is a blend of the confidential and the boring, the earth-shattering and the mundane. She’s the person in charge of scheduling Clinton’s medical appointments and haircuts. She conducted the introductory interview with every senior staffer on the campaign, her decision determining whether they would go on to meet Clinton. She’s also the woman that political movers and shakers call when they need to speak to the likely Democratic candidate for president. Recently released State Department emails mention the former vice president Al Gore, Senator Charles Schumer, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke and even Bill Clinton among the callers reaching out to Abedin to find her boss. (Abedin actually carries Clinton’s phones, screening calls to determine whom the former secretary of state will speak to.)
A current staffer describes Abedin as the third-most-influential person on the presidential campaign, behind only the campaign manager Robby Mook and the campaign chairman John Podesta. The email controversy has also demonstrated Abedin’s quiet influence; on many emails sent to Clinton, Abedin was copied. By one estimate, 18 per cent of the emails released by Clinton were sent from Abedin.
“At this point, Huma’s role is so important that they are now baking that into the process of the campaign,” argues the former Gore adviser Michael Feldman. Abedin is now so significant in her own right that her campaign role includes speaking to donors and appearing at fundraisers. She is her own draw now.
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