Hillary Clinton WikiLeaks emails reveal her closest aide Huma Abedin had serious fears about her health
Leaked messages from last year also claim Democrat candidate was 'often confused', and suggest she needs to lean on podium while making speeches
HILLARY Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin warned her campaign team in 2015 that the Democrat candidate was “still not perfect in her head” and would have to “stick to notes” during an event.
The revelation was made in an e-mail – one of thousands hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s account that have been released by WikiLeaks.
The exchange came at the end of a discussion among staff about how Clinton would address Jeb Bush’s funding for his campaign.
“Yes. If she feels need to address Jeb directly — would suggest the pivot,” Clinton’s director of communications Jennifer Palmieri wrote, referring to the remarks the team was preparing.
Abedin responded: “She’s going to stick to notes a little closer this am, still not perfect in her head.”
The email dates back to 21 April 2015 – just days after Clinton kicked off her presidential campaign.
It appears Abedin was referring to a serious health problem of some sort.
And senior aides continued to express concerns over the matter in subsequent messages to each other.
Five months later, Podesta wrote to communications director Jennifer Palmieri, asking: “How bad is her head?”
The subject line of the email was titled: “Any sense of whether and when she wants to talk?”
Palmieri replied: “Don’t know. Huma left here about an hour ago. I just pinged again to ask about prep, haven't heard back.”
Clinton’s opponents have speculated that she still may be feeling the effects of a concussion suffered in December 2012, after which she was hospitalised with a blood clot near her brain.
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Her doctors said in 2013 that she had made a full recovery following the episode.
But the latest leaked correspondence seem to suggest people close to her were not convinced.
One such message from Abedin to another team member Monic Hanley claimed Clinton was “often confused”.
And in another email, the aide suggested cutting a speech short because there was nothing for the presidential hopeful to lean on while speaking.
She went to her daughter Chelsea’s New York apartment to rest, and later revealed she had recently been diagnosed with pneumonia.
Donald Trump has often used his rival’s health as a weapon on the campaign trail, claiming she was physically unfit for the stresses of the top job.
Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, he said: “She’s supposed to fight all of these recent things and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car.”
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