Clinton confidant testifies before House Benghazi panel

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By MATTHEW DALY and STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, complained Tuesday that his committee should have received emails between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and a longtime Clinton confidant long ago.

The confidant, Sidney Blumenthal, testified in a closed session before the House Benghazi committee Tuesday morning about frequent emails on Libya he sent to Clinton when she served as secretary of state. Blumenthal worked in the White House under President Bill Clinton and is a longtime friend and adviser to the Clinton family.

The committee announced Monday night that it had received roughly 60 new emails totaling 120 pages from Blumenthal. The emails are between Clinton and Blumenthal and were not previously produced to the committee or released to the public, a committee spokeswoman said.

"I will leave it to you to figure out whether there was a failure to produce on the former secretary's part or a failure to produce on the Department of State's behalf," Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told reporters before the start of Tuesday's deposition. "But clearly the committee should have gotten this information sooner."

FULL story at link.



Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant to former President Bill Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 16, 2015, to face questions from the Republican-led House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f252eec95f744c02bb064d41fd9b8a63/clinton-confidant-testify-house-benghazi-panel

[Wilms]

1. How are ya, Sid?

_____ to see ya.

[Gman]

2. Why TF is the media still covering this committee?

What a waste of time and money.

[Human101948]

3. Do they think Sid organized the attack on the Benghazi consulate?

Was he cahoots with Al Qaeda?

What the fuck are they looking for?

[karynnj]

4. You know what they are looking for -- anything to damage Clinton

This could be anything from:
- the original goal which was to find anything where HRC PERSONALLY argued to coverup that this was a terrorist attack. In reality, that is impossible as both HRC and Obama spoke of acts of terrorisms soon after the attack and when teh bodies were returned. Now, the RW had some bizarre definition that because they did not use phrases like Islamoterrorsim that they were not calling it terrorism. In their bizarre mindset, this was because doing so would cause Obama to lose to Romney. (Personally, I suspect they considered how to contain political damage - it was a month and a half before an election, but the basic facts were out almost immediately. 4 Americans, including teh ambassador were killed by extremists.)

- proof that she destroyed SD related emails. That is why they are making a production of the fact that some of Blumenthal's emails were not given to them by the State Department. (Tell me this was not to be expected? It may well be the SD missed them in their initial pass through 55,000 pages to get the committee these emails as quickly as possible. It is also possible that the Clinton team missed them in their sort between personal and work. At any rate, the SD was given a lose/lose job getting all the email on line. No matter how quickly and professionally, they process all the email, there will be mistakes. It is hard to believe that they won't miss something they should redact. In addition, it will take longer than anyone wants. (As to HRC saying no one wants it done faster than her - a question is why she didn't give it the SD 2 years earlier or electronically when she did -- they spent 5 weeks scanning them in.)

- They are widening the question to what was happening in Libya before the attacks.

Here, think the Starr commision -- they had things they were suppose to investigate - white water -- moved to Paula Jones -- leading to Monica (goes to pattern) --- that goes to lying under oath -- that goes to a very lame impeachment process, that was politically motivated or they had a strange definition of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Here, they are charged to investigate Benghazi and may well end up with going after email (even though Kerry was the first to use JUST State.gov for work.) or the entire Libya war.

[leveymg]

6. Unlikely ever to get to "the entire Libya war" because that leads to the Syria war,

which goes to the creation, financing, arming, and ultimate goals of ISIS, which frankly nobody wants to look at too closely in public session.

[still_one]

5. Hope he isn't the number 3 man in Al Qaeda, they just got the number 2 man

[Fred Sanders]

7. Thanks for the endless free publicity, asshats. Voters are asking "why so afraid of one woman?"

Yours truly,

Hillary.

[alboe]

8. Of course this is to damage Clinton.

They'll continue to try to do so for as long as they can