Washington, Apr 24 : Us Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's friends have found a new way to help her pay most of the bills left over from her presidential campaign.

US election laws barred President Barack Obama from writing a big cheque to help settle Clinton's gaping campaign debt, but he and other Clinton allies found another way to help the Secretary of State pay presidential campaign debt, Politico reports.

Obama's inaugural committee and a slew of other groups ranging from Bill Clinton's charitable foundation to Media Matters to the Democratic gubernatorial campaigns of Gavin Newsom in California and Terry McAuliffe in Virginia combined to pay nearly 2.1 million dollars.

Clinton's presidential campaign received an additional 2.6 million dollars from her still-functioning Senate campaign, which a source close to the campaigns said was to buy the presidential email list outright.

The more than 3.6 million dollars she received for the list, revealed in Federal Election Commission filings, is about four times the 938,000 dollars donors gave.

To be sure, email lists are valuable fundraising tools, and it's become standard practice for campaigns to rent or buy them from one another.

But the money came at an especially opportune time for Clinton, whose ability to raise money to repay her debts is limited by ethics rules and traditions that effectively bar diplomats from partisan political activity, including raising cash.

The income from the list''s rental and sale - the latter cryptically listed in her FEC filings as "sale of assets" - allowed Clinton''s presidential campaign in the first three months of the year to pay 3.7 million dollars in leftover bills. (ANI)