The State Department released the latest batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State on Friday night. One email included in the email dump shows Secretary Clinton instructing one of her aides to print out three copies of an email after first removing any reference to longtime Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal. But the next day Clinton had closed-door meetings with both President Obama and then-Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice.
On September 13, 2010, Blumenthal passed along a memo from former Ambassador Joe Wilson, updating Clinton on his recent trip to Baghdad. On September 30, Clinton instructed aide Lauren Jiloty to “print three copies but remove the heading from Sid so it is just the memo from Joe to me.”
It’s unknown if Hillary intended to distribute the extra copies of the email to Obama and Rice or to keep them for her own purposes.
According to a 2010 Chicago Sun Times blog post, President Obama’s schedule for October 1, 2010 indicated that he had an 11:30 a.m. meeting with Clinton. The meeting was held in the Oval Office and was closed to the press. While Secretary Clinton’s public schedule didn’t list her October 1 meeting with President Obama, it did include a 9:30 a.m. meeting with Ambassador Rice. Like her meeting with Obama, Clinton’s meeting with Rice was closed to the press. It’s currently unclear what Clinton’s motive for removing the email headings might have been, although the Obama administration and Blumenthal had a notoriously frigid relationship.
Clinton has refused to publicly admit that Blumenthal was anything more than an “old friend,” even testifying under oath that he did not serve as her advisor. As Hillary’s emails have been released to the public, however, it’s become clear that Blumenthal gave Clinton extensive advice on the Middle East via email. Clinton even met with Blumenthal at the State Department, as noted by The Daily Caller back in January.
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