Hillary’s Northern Ireland chats revealed in email dump

The latest batch of government email from Hillary Clinton’s private server contains several strands of conversation about Northern Ireland.

The Irish Times reports that Clinton, as Secretary of State in 2009, passed on participating in a panel discussion about the North after first saying it was “a good idea.” The panel was being hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative, the family foundation she runs with her husband, the former president, and daughter. It was to feature Irish and Northern Irish officials. Clinton bowed out of the event after an aide suggested her appearance might be perceived as a conflict.

In another conversation, the 2016 Democratic presidential front runner express her glee that Co. Tipperary businessman Declan Kelly received a State Department security clearance to serve as her economic envoy to Northern Ireland. Kelly runs the New York public relations and corporate advisory firm Tenco with  Doug Band, a former adviser to Bill Clinton.

Clinton used a private account during her State Department tenure to shield her email from public record requests. A U.S. judge ordered the State Department to release the emails in batches every 30 days until all 55,000 pages she gave to the agency in December are released.

One other note on U.S.-Irish relations: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner met with Taoiseach Enda Kenny. They discussed the Irish economic recovery, immigration reform including the plight of the undocumented Irish in the U.S., and the situation in the North, according to the Times.

Boehner was accompanied to Dublin by seven members of Congress.