House Benghazi Committee Discovers Some of Clinton’s Correspondence Was Withheld

The patented Obama/Clinton slow walk technique, in which important information is held back from the public, press, and congressional investigators until scandals die of old age, is evidently still in use.

A congressional source tells Politico that “House GOP Benghazi investigators have discovered additional Libya communications between Sidney Blumenthal and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” long after subpoenas were filed and supposedly responded to.

Blumenthal — a longtime Clinton family friend who is set to testify before the committee behind closed doors Tuesday morning — recently gave the House Select Committee on Benghazi his Libya-related emails after the panel had quietly subpoenaed them.

Among those were several emails concerning Libya between Blumenthal and Clinton that had not been previously turned over by State. Panel Republicans, the source says, are pushing to release the emails as early as tomorrow but may need Democrats to agree to do so under committee rules.

No doubt the Party of Transparency will get right on that.

Politico’s source wasn’t sure whether “Clinton had turned the emails over to State and State did not provide them, or whether Clinton failed to hand over the correspondence.” It appears this particular stalling tactic was facilitated by the State Department pretending that House only asked for emails specifically referencing the city of Benghazi, when in fact all of Clinton’s correspondence relevant to Libya was included in the request.

For its part, the State Department declared it was fully committed to transparency, working hard to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests, and so on – the same canned blather emitted by every Obama Administration agency, from the Justice Department to the IRS, when it’s caught slow-walking and stonewalling investigations. The Administration really ought to put its ritual praise for transparency to music, and perform it as a literal soft-shoe number for the remainder of President Obama’s term, so we can get a few laughs out of all this.

Politico provides some background on why Sidney Blumenthal is testifying before the House Benghazi Committee:

The Clinton-Blumenthal relationship came under scrutiny last month when the New York Times reported that Blumenthal had been passing Clinton unsubstantiated intelligence on Libya, including one email where he blamed the Libya attacks on an anti-Muslim Internet video. Then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice suggested the video was a major cause as well in an initial TV appearance, but critics said the administration was dishonest about the security situation in the fragile country following dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s ousting.

Barred from a State position by the Obama administration but paid $10,000 a month to advise the philanthropic Clinton Foundation, Blumenthal was also engaged in talks about a new Libyan business venture. At the same time, he also passed Clinton information about the security situation in Libya.

Republicans say his advice and intelligence on Libya were mentioned in more than 35 percent of the correspondence Clinton received on Libya, which she circulated to top staff at the State Department.

35 percent of Clinton’s correspondence on Libya included unvetted, unverified input from a guy who was barred for working for the State Department? It’s not hard to see why Libya turned into one of the most hideous disasters in the annals of U.S. foreign policy, is it?

Also, whatever fraction of Clinton Foundation donors actually thought they were donating money to assist “philanthropic” endeavors should be pretty angry to learn they were actually contributing to a slush fund designed primarily for two purposes: covering the Clintons’ luxury travel expenses, and keeping people like Sid Blumenthal on retainer until Hillary’s presidential campaign creaked and groaned to life. It’s useful to have characters like Blumenthal standing by when you need to push an idiotic hit piece on a promising political opponent to a major media organization such as the New York Times.

House Republicans will now get to play through another Clinton sand trap, flailing away with their subpoena wedges in a long, agonizing effort to find out if there are any more documents Clinton, Blumenthal, and the State Department conveniently forgot to hand over, while Democrats carp and whine about how long the investigation is taking.

Sid Blumenthal certainly seems a bit nervous about the pace picking up, doesn’t he?  Did he print those emails out on paper before handing them over, the way Hillary Clinton pointlessly did with the trove of correspondence she eventually coughed up… and, if so, were Blumenthal’s emails sweat-stained?