The House Select Committee on Benghazi wants to depose Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton insider, on June 3.
Reuters reported that a U.S. marshal served the 66-year-old Blumenthal’s wife with a subpoena on Tuesday.
On Monday, The New York Times published a bombshell article showing that in 2011 and 2012, Blumenthal provided intelligence reports on Libya to Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state. Some of those reports provided information and suggestions that were favorable to some Blumenthal business associates.
Emails obtained by The Times showed that Clinton forwarded some reports to others in the State Department. While Clinton approved of some of Blumenthal’s intelligence, she and others in the agency also found some of it to contain errors and poor judgement.
“I can confirm Mr. Blumenthal has been called for a deposition by the committee,” Jamal Ware, a spokesman for South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chair of the Benghazi committee, told Reuters.
In lieu of a comment, Blumenthal sent Reuters an article referring to Gowdy’s findings and The Times report as a “damp squib.” That article appears to be one published Tuesday by National Memo’s Joe Conason who, like Blumenthal, is a rabid Clinton supporter.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi committee, lashed out at Gowdy’s decision to serve Blumenthal with a subpoena.
“There was no need for the Select Committee to send two U.S. Marshals to the home of Sidney Blumenthal to serve his wife with a subpoena, especially since the Committee never bothered to contact him first to ask him whether he would voluntarily come in. These heavy-handed, aggressive, and unnecessary tactics waste the time of the U.S. Marshal service,” Cummings told Reuters.
Ware, Gowdy’s spokesman, responded to Cummings’ dig, telling Politico that “those who complain about the committee’s speed don’t get to complain when the committee cuts to the chase.”
Cummings has gone on record saying that the Benghazi committee was not proceeding with its investigation quickly enough and that if it planned to call Clinton to testify, it should do so sooner rather than later.
Gowdy has said that he wants Clinton to meet with the Benghazi committee twice — once in private and once in public. Clinton’s handlers have said they will make her available to the committee, but for only one session.