Some of Hillary Clinton’s Libya emails said to be withheld from Benghazi Committee
It's not clear who withheld the correspondence.
House GOP Benghazi investigators have discovered additional Libya communications between Sidney Blumenthal and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a congressional source told POLITICO — suggesting that either the State Department or the 2016 Democratic presidential contender withheld correspondence the panel had subpoenaed.
Blumenthal — a longtime Clinton family friend who is set to testify before the committee behind closed doors Tuesday morning — recently gave the House Select Committee on Benghazi his Libya-related emails after the panel had quietly subpoenaed them.
o touch on Blumenthal’s intelligence sourcing. Usually those in decision-making positions at major agencies receive vetted intelligence to ensure accuracy — but Blumenthal circumvented those traditional lines of communication because of his close relationship with Clinton. And Clinton’s responses show she took him seriously enough to forward around his emails to her top aides, though some messages were met with skepticism.
Among those were several emails concerning Libya between Blumenthal and Clinton that had not been previously turned over by State. Clinton has said she gave all her work-related correspondence, kept on her personal email server, to the State Department.
State was then tasked with going through the emails and giving the panel relevant correspondence. Department officials turned up about 300 emails related to Benghazi.
The source did not know whether Clinton had turned the emails over to State and State did not provide them, or whether Clinton failed to hand over the correspondence.
A State Department spokesman downplayed the discovery and said the agency gave the panel what it asked for.
“The Department is working diligently to publish to its public website all of the emails received from former Secretary Clinton through the FOIA process,” Alec Gerlach said in a statement. “We provided the Committee with a subset of documents that matched its request and will continue to work with them going forward.”
At the crux of the back and forth is whether the committee specifically asked State for all her Libya emails or only Benghazi-related emails. State says the panel initially asked for Benghazi material and only recently expanded that request to include all correspondence on the Middle Eastern nation. But the initial requests for information from Hillary did include all Libya correspondence, according to the congressional source.
Blumenthal’s attorney, James Cole, and Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The committee has subpoenaed Clinton’s Libya-related emails. But because she used a personal server, her lawyer decided which emails constituted “official” communications and provided them to the State Department before they were released to the committee and publicly.
The Clinton-Blumenthal relationship came under scrutiny last month when the New York Times reported that Blumenthal had been passing Clinton unsubstantiated intelligence on Libya, including one email where he blamed the Libya attacks on an anti-Muslim Internet video.
Barred from a State position by the Obama administration but paid $10,000 a month to advise the philanthropic Clinton Foundation during, Blumenthal was also engaged in talks about a new Libyan business venture.
Republicans say his advice and intelligence on Libya were mentioned in more than 35 percent of the correspondence Clinton received on Libya, which she circulated to top staff at the State Department.
The GOP on Tuesday plans to question Blumenthal — who earned a spot in Clinton’s inner circle after his ardent defense of Bill during the 1990s impeachment trial — about their relationship, why he passed Clinton such emails and whether he was getting paid for his work. Republicans question if the advice was really “unsolicited,” as Clinton has said.
So far, Blumenthal and Clinton have dismissed the GOP’s suspicions, and Clinton has said they’re simply “old friends.” Blumenthal has said he sent Clinton information he believed “she might find interesting or helpful,” per the statement he released following news of his subpoena.
Tuesday’s deposition, the panel’s first, is closed to reporters and more formal than the several dozen transcribed interviews the committee has already completed. It starts at 10 a.m. and will be broken down into one-hour rounds of questions with Republicans and Democrats alternating control.
Due to the latest discovery, it is likely to focus on whether more Libya emails are missing.
It will also touch on Blumenthal’s intelligence sourcing. Usually those in decision-making positions at major agencies receive vetted intelligence to ensure accuracy — but Blumenthal circumvented those traditional lines of communication because of his close relationship with Clinton. And Clinton’s responses show she took him seriously enough to forward around his emails to her top aides, though some messages were met with skepticism.
o touch on Blumenthal’s intelligence sourcing. Usually those in decision-making positions at major agencies receive vetted intelligence to ensure accuracy — but Blumenthal circumvented those traditional lines of communication because of his close relationship with Clinton. And Clinton’s responses show she took him seriously enough to forward around his emails to her top aides, though some messages were met with skepticism.
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