Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, grilled Hillary Clinton Thursday about her reliance on a divisive political operative for intelligence about Libya.
Clinton’s friendship with Sidney Blumenthal, an aide to her failed 2008 bid for president, has become a focal point of the select committee’s investigation of Benghazi after her private emails indicated Blumenthal had a direct line to the former secretary of state but Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack, did not.
Clinton defended her connection to Blumenthal as a purely personal one that involved her former aide sending her “unsolicited” advice.
During one of the most heated exchanges of the hearing Thursday, Gowdy cited an instance in which Clinton asked Blumenthal, “What are you hearing now?” about Libya in an email.
“If you’re the one asking him for information, how does that square with the definition of unsolicited?” Gowdy asked.
“I have no idea,” Clinton said. “They started out as unsolicited.”
Her admission was a departure from previous characterizations of the Blumenthal memos, which she has described as missives from a personal friend.
“I don’t know where he got the information,” Clinton said.
After Gowdy pressed her on why Clinton never asked where Blumenthal’s emails were coming from, Clinton said she later found out Blumenthal had gotten his information from a former U.S. intelligence official.
That former intelligence officer, Tyler Drumheller, wrote all of the memos Blumenthal ultimately forwarded to Clinton.
Clinton then passed those memos on to her senior staff for their reactions, typically after stripping them of any markings that identified them as coming from Blumenthal.
Gowdy read from an email that disparaged the president and the secretary of defense and another that criticized Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon.
He suggested the derogatory nature of Blumenthal’s comments about the administration was behind the White House’s insistence that he be kept out of the State Department in 2009.
“Blumenthal could not get hired by our government,” Gowdy said.
Clinton asked Gowdy how Blumenthal was relevant to the Benghazi attack.
“It’s relevant because our ambassador was asked to read and respond to Blumenthal’s drivel,” Gowdy said.
