Ken Berwitz
A trove of emails thatthe State Department gave the House Select Committee on Benghazi only two weeksago show that longtime Hillary Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal pushed hisbusiness interests in Libya on the then-secretary of state and that sheforwarded an email discussing a CIA source which was classified at the time itwas sent.
That\’s accordingto House Select Committee on Benghazi chairman Trey Gowdy, who stated in a letter sent Thursday to Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummingsthat he plans to release the 1,500 emails within the next five days.
Though many of theexchanges involved discussions about Libya and Benghazi, the State Departmentturned the records over only two weeks ago. In May, the State Departmentreleased what it claimed at the time were all of the emails related to theNorth African country.
While it is stillunclear why the agency withheld the documents for so long, the discovery of therecords corresponds with the departure of Catherine Duval. She took a job inthe legal affairs division of the State Department last August and handled theproduction of Clinton’s emails. Duval, who previously worked at the IRS on theproduction of Lois Lerner\’s emails, had also worked at Williams & Connolly,the law firm that employees Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall.
In his letter to Cummings, Gowdy refers to emails from Blumenthal whichindicate that he was pushing business interests on behalf of a companycalled Osprey Global Solutions, which sought private contracts in post-civilwar Libya. That despite Blumenthal having no official position within the U.S.government. In fact, the Obama administration famously blocked him from a jobat Clinton’s State Department because of his dirty political work during the2008 presidential campaign.
So what do we have here?
-We have classified documents being passed to a confidante and political friend (FYI: Sid Blumenthal is known as a hatchet man supreme), whom Ms. Clinton\’s boss, the President of the United States, did not want anywhere near the administration.
-We have emails that could have and should have been made available a long time ago – but may have been withheld by a lois lerner confidante (remember her? The one who pled the fifth to the house oversight committee – after first giving her side of the story, which almost certainly made taking the fifth illegal? The one who ought to be in jail right now?).
-And we have the State Department caught in a blatant lie, when it said all the emails had been turned over.
