The House Select Committee on Benghazi will talk to longtime Clinton insider Sidney Blumenthal about his emails with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a committee member said Wednesday.
Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo confirmed the panel’s interest in talking to Blumenthal in an interview with talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“The committee will also speak with Mr. Blumenthal,” Pompeo said. “We’ve got other folks who we’re still pursuing who may well have also had personal email accounts.”
On Tuesday, Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy sent a letter to Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, asking that she appear before the panel to answer questions about her private email account and server. That request came days after Kendall informed the committee that Clinton’s server had been wiped clean of all of its contents.
Gowdy said that Clinton must appear before May 1 to clear up the status of the emails and server. After that, Gowdy plans to call her to testify in front of the committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Before Pompeo’s comments, none of the committee members had mentioned Blumenthal. But talking with him is a logical choice given that he communicated regularly with Clinton while she was in office.
In fact, it was Blumenthal’s email account that first shed light on the fact that Clinton used a private email account, HDR22@clintonemail.com. A Romanian hacker infiltrated Blumenthal’s email account, revealing those exchanges.
What was not known at the time was that Clinton used only that email address to send and receive personal and official government emails. Clinton’s exclusive use of that account was revealed last summer while State Department staffers were searching through records to submit to Gowdy’s committee. Clinton turned over what she claims are all of her official government emails in December. The State Department turned over 300 of those emails to the committee in February.
Blumenthal’s and Clinton’s off-the-books working relationship took another intriguing twist last week.
The website Gawker reported that Blumenthal was operating what closely resembled a clandestine intelligence operation. Blumenthal gathered intelligence reports about Libya, Egypt, Europe and other hot spots through various sources and would share that information with Clinton.
Gawker also reported that Blumenthal lobbied Clinton on behalf of John Kornblum, a former Clinton White House aide who became ambassador of Germany. Kornblum was promoting Georgian politician Bidzina Ivanishvili, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In working in such a way on behalf of a foreign interest, Blumenthal may have violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
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