Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct matters involving classified information and private correspondences during her tenure as Secretary of State has drawn the ire of many Americans. An initial report from the New York Times indicated that Clinton, on the first day of her Senate Confirmation hearing, arranged to set up an email under the domain “clintonemail.com” with a private server operating from her own home.
Since the scandal has been unraveling, it has been discovered that many emails on Clinton’s private server were from Sidney Blumenthal, a political supporter and former staffer for the Clinton Foundation. Clinton’s attempt to empower Blumenthal as an adviser to her at the State Department was rejected by President Obama. It is widely believed that the President’s refusal to allow Clinton’s hiring of her former staffer underscores a serious distrust of Blumenthal harbored by the White House.
But that didn’t stop Clinton from receiving advice from Blumenthal, which she then passed off to security officials while omitting its source. One of the Blumenthal memos initially informed Clinton that the Benghazi attack was a response to a YouTube video. Other private memos from Blumenthal, of which there are roughly 25, touted his business associates and often contained incorrect information.
Journalist John Tabin said Blumenthal’s intel was “shoddy, with basic errors like mixing up Libyan politicians with similar names.” Tabin also discovered that Blumenthal asserted that a businessman named Najib Obeida was among “the most influential” of the Libyan prime minister’s economic advisers, while omitting that Obeida was a potential business partner of his company.
Luckily, President Obama has assured the American people of his administration’s highest level of transparency in US history. Accordingly, the State Department has begun releasing the first batch of Hillary’s emails, many of which pertain to the Benghazi attack. Below is a copy of one:
