Following a fainting incident and subsequent concussion, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday regarding the Benghazi attacks, a Senate aide told POLITICO.
Though the faint happened earlier this week, the office of Sen. John Kerry, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and the press were not notified of the incident until Saturday, POLITICO reports.
“Senator Kerry was relieved to hear that the Secretary is on the mend, but he insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear on Thursday as previously planned, and that the nation’s best interests are served by the report and hearings proceeding as scheduled with senior officials appearing in her place,” a spokeswoman for Sen. Kerry’s office said.
The Secretary of State would have presented the findings of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board investigation into the Libya consulate attacks. Attending Thursday’s hearing instead will be Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides.
Clinton, who was apparently dehydrated from a stomach flu at the time of the faint, is recovering at home. The Secretary was not hospitalized at all because of it, though she did see her doctors, State spokesman Philippe Reines told POLITICO.
The Secretary of State previously declined to talk about Benghazi on the Sunday morning news programs the weekend following the attacks, due to a grueling week, the Daily Mail reported. The entire situation surrounding the Benghazi attacks and hearings just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser — and Americans just want the truth.
