WASHINGTON – Top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin will testify before the House Benghazi Committee at 10 AM Friday in a closed-door session at the U.S. Capitol. Breitbart News has learned from the Committee what she will and will not be asked about.
Abedin is a key figure in the Benghazi scandal, and could have information about how the administration changed its talking points to blame the terrorist attack on a Youtube video. Abedin is also at the center of Clinton’s private email scandal and various other controversies involving her work for the private consulting firm Teneo Holdings, having recruited a State Department official to the firm on her government email address while on a trip to Cambodia with Clinton.
“The committee has typically avoided announcing appearances before it, but the continued mischaracterizations of the committee’s actions by Democrats, partisans and outside groups necessitates a change in this practice,” said a Committee spokesman.
Here’s what we found out:
She Will Be Asked What Happened On The Day of the Attack:
Abedin’s closeness to Clinton makes her a prime witness for the Committee. Information about Clinton’s conduct on the day of the attack is still shrouded in mystery, with the State Department fighting to keep Benghazi-related emails out of public view. The fact that Clinton deleted so many of her emails – which might still be recovered from her private server by federal detectives – raises alarming questions about what went on behind the scenes.
Abedin will be asked about “the events leading up to, during and after the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012,” according to the Committee.
Considering that Clinton knew the day after the attack – courtesy of evidence provided by her own secret Libya adviser Sidney Blumenthal – that the murder was likely carried out by the Ansar Al-Sharia Islamic militant group, her efforts to blame the Youtube movie “Innocence of Muslims” are especially concerning.
Abedin almost certainly knows what happened, but don’t expect her to cough information up easily. Abedin has already lawyered up, big time. One of her lawyers, Karen Dunn, was a Clinton adviser and now serves as partner at the top law firm Boies, Schiller, and Flexner. Her other lawyer Miguel Rodriguez was actually an Obama administration “point person” on the Benghazi scandal who exchanged redacted information over email with Abedin and Clinton.
She Will Be Asked About The Administration’s Response to Congress
This is a big one. The Committee said it will ask Abedin about “executive branch activities and efforts to comply with congressional inquiries into them.”
The State Department is fighting hard to keep this information secret.
When the agency prepared a “Vaughn List” identifying the emails that it plans to keep classified in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the group Citizens United, emails about State’s response to Congress featured prominently. All thirteen classified email exchanges involved Department staffers discussing how to deal with members of Congress including House Oversight chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz.
She will NOT Be Asked About the Clinton Foundation
The Committee determined that information about Abedin’s relationship with the Clinton Foundation does not apply to the Committee’s charter.
Foundation information could be important, especially in light of a recent Breitbart News report that found that Clinton’s State Department staffers discussed Benghazi with Clinton Foundation staff.
But the Committee is being careful to make sure its efforts will not be unfairly portrayed as partisan or especially Clinton-oriented. It’s a smart move to focus on the specifics of what went on behind the scenes at the State Department without getting into too much Clinton-World stuff, which could allow the media to disparage the Committee’s work.
She Will NOT Be Asked About Teneo Holdings
Abedin will not be asked about her work for Teneo Holdings, the firm founded by former Bill Clinton right-hand man Doug Band. Again, the Committee felt that questions about Teneo, and also about Abedin’s Special Government Employee status, fall outside the range of its charter.
This is fine. Senate investigator Sen. Chuck Grassley is in hot pursuit of information about Teneo, so the House committee does not need to spend any time in this session grilling Abedin about it.
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