House GOP Benghazi investigators have discovered 60 new Libya
communications between Sidney Blumenthal and former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, a congressional source told POLITICO on Monday —
suggesting that either the State Department or the 2016 Democratic
presidential contender withheld correspondence the panel had requested.
The
House Select Committee on Benghazi had quietly subpoenaed Blumenthal’s
Libya emails. And on Friday, the longtime Clinton family friend — who is
set to testify before investigators behind closed doors Tuesday morning
— handed over 120 pages worth of new Libya- and Benghazi-related
emails.
“These emails were not previously produced to the Committee
or released to the public, and they will help inform tomorrow’s
deposition,” panel Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement late
Monday evening. “We are prepared to release these emails.”
Panel
Republicans are pushing to release the emails as early as Tuesday but
need Democrats to agree to do so under committee rules that require the
minority to be given a five-day warning before release.
In the meantime, they’re wondering why they didn’t have them in the first place.
Clinton
has said she and her team gave all her work-related correspondence over
to State, which was then tasked with going through the emails and
giving the panel relevant messages. Department officials turned up about
300 emails related to the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic compound
that left four Americans dead.
The congressional
source did not know whether Clinton had turned over all the new emails
to State and State did not provide them, or whether Clinton failed to
hand over the correspondence.
Blumenthal’s attorney, James Cole, and Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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
Clinton’s Libya emails or only Benghazi-related correspondence. State
says the panel initially asked for Benghazi-only material and only
recently expanded that request to include all correspondence on the
Middle Eastern nation. The congressional source argued that the initial
request for information from Clinton was aimed at all Libya
correspondence — and that State was being evasive.
The Dec. 2, 2014, letter to Clinton’s lawyer, which he then forwarded to State, does not seem to limit the scope.
“Please
provide, as soon as possible but no later than Dec. 31, 2014, any and
all documents and communications referring or relating to a.) Libya
(including but not limited to Benghazi and Tripoli), and/or b) weapons
located or found in, imported or brought into, and/or exported or
removed from Libya, authored by, sent to, or received by the email
address ‘hdr22@clintonemail.com’ between Jan. 1, 2011 through Dec. 31,
2013,” it says.
Republicans say that the broader
U.S.-Libya policy in the months leading up to the attack could have
influenced what happened in Benghazi, when a special diplomatic mission
was overrun by terrorists. But Democrats will argue the two are distinct
and the committee is on a fishing expedition aimed at making Clinton
look bad.
But the debate may be beside the point: The panel in its statement
says some of the emails specifically relate to the Benghazi attacks and,
therefore, should have been turned over, even if the State Department
read the document request narrowly.
Since Clinton used
a personal server when she was secretary, rather than an official State
email account as she was supposed to, 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. Then-U.N.
Ambassador Susan Rice suggested the video was a major cause as well in
an initial TV appearance, but critics said the administration was
dishonest about the security situation in the fragile country following
dictator Muammar Qadhafi’s ousting.
Barred from a
State position by the Obama administration but paid $10,000 a month to
advise the philanthropic Clinton Foundation, Blumenthal was also engaged
in talks about a new Libyan business venture. At the same time, he also
passed Clinton information about the security situation in Libya. 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.
Republicans last week said his advice and
intelligence on Libya were mentioned in more than 35 percent of the
correspondence Clinton received on Libya.
Tuesday’s
deposition with Blumenthal, the panel’s first, is closed to reporters.
Due to the latest discovery, the questioning will likely focus on
whether more Libya emails are missing.
The GOP on
Tuesday also 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.
The
panel 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.
