Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said the previously undisclosed emails sent between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal have never been given to any congressional committee but noted the new documents would inform the select committee’s investigation.
“Given the volume and frankly the detail of the correspondence between this witness and former Secretary Clinton, it’s important for the committee to probe the depth, breadth and frankly the reliability of that information that he passed off,” Gowdy said minutes before heading into the hearing Tuesday morning.
“I think it’s noteworthy that no committee of Congress that has previously looked into the Benghazi or Libya uncovered these memos, and 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,” the South Carolina Republican told the group of roughly a dozen reporters that were waiting outside the closed-door deposition.
“Clearly the committee should have gotten this information sooner,” Gowdy added.
Committee staff revealed Monday evening the existence of new emails that were not included in the batch of Benghazi-related communications published by the State Department last month.
A number of other congressional committees — including the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Intelligence Committee — have probed the incidents related to the Benghazi attack without uncovering the Blumenthal emails.
“Sidney Blumenthal produced to the committee nearly 60 new emails regarding Libya and Benghazi,” Gowdy said late Monday. “These emails were not previously produced to the committee or released to the public, and they will help inform tomorrow’s deposition. We are prepared to release these emails, but where practicable our internal processes include consultation with the Ranking Member before release. If Ranking Member [Elijah] Cummings consents, we will add to the former secretary’s public email record and release these shortly. If not, we will do so after the required five days has passed.”
The roughly 120 pages of new emails will be one focus of the private deposition Tuesday.
The committee will focus heavily on uncovering the details of Blumenthal’s informal intelligence operation in Libya, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., said Monday.
Gowdy issued a subpoena for Blumenthal May 19 in the wake of reports that the former Clinton aide had sent a series of Libyan intelligence memos to Clinton before and after the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
Blumenthal has been a close Clinton ally since 1997, when Bill Clinton first hired him as an assistant in the White House.
Hillary Clinton has defended her reliance on Blumenthal as a key source of intelligence in Libya by claiming she was simply receiving “unsolicited” information from an “old friend.”
