Just hours after Hillary Clinton dodged a question at the final presidential debate about charges of "pay to play" at the Clinton Foundation, a new batch of WikiLeaks emails surfaced with stunning charges that the candidate herself was at the center of negotiating a $12 million commitment from King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
One of the more remarkable parts of the charge is that the allegation came from Clinton's loyal aide, Huma Abedin, who described the connection in a January 2015 email exchange with two top advisers to the candidate, John Podesta and Robby Mook.
Abedin wrote that "this was HRC's idea" for her to speak at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Morocco in May 2015 as an explicit condition for the $12 million commitment from the king.
"She created this mess and she knows it," Abedin wrote to Podesta and Mook.
The "mess" refers in part to the fact that the three Clinton advisers were discussing the possibility of the former secretary of state pulling out of speaking at the May 2015 event because it was happening one month after the official launch of her presidential campaign and could raise more questions about her role at the foundation.
In April 2015, Politico reported the Clinton Foundation was accepting a "major donation" of at least $1 million from a Moroccan government-owned company, OCP, a phosphate exporter. Politico added that an official at the foundation said it was "unlikely" Hillary would attend the May 2015 event, just weeks after the April launch of her campaign.
It turns out the amount was far bigger -- $12 million -- and there was a far bigger struggle over whether Clinton would attend because she had a much more extensive role in lining up the money than the public ever knew.