UPDATE: Clinton Fundraiser Says He Was ‘Wrong’ to Be Friends with Bashar al-Assad

The man hosting Hillary Clinton’s Boston fundraiser Thursday night has admitted that he was “wrong” to be a close friend and supporter of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Clinton’s fundraiser host, Bobby Sager, an investor and quasi-celebrity philanthropist, is disavowing his friendship with the genocidal tyrant whose regime has overseen the rise of the Syria-based terrorist group ISIS.

“I’m the kind of person who has been successful because I can read people and I’m a good communicator,” Sager told The Boston Globe prior to the fundraiser Thursday. “In this case, I certainly was wrong. Without any equivocation. There’s no ’but.’”

Breitbart News reported Wednesday night on Sager’s close friendship with Assad.

Sager sent Assad’s adviser an email in March 2011, which was obtained by the hacker group LulzFinancial, in which he promised to support Assad’s regime around all of his powerful American friends.

“I have been very moved by the time I spent with you and with President Assad,” Sager wrote:

I take the many insights from our conversations and combine them with first hand perspective I gained from my time spent at Umayyad mosque, the souk, the coffee shops and even the hammam. I leave Syria with a profound sense of connection and a desire to share my understanding with influential friends in the United States and around the world…

My first hand understanding, without the distorting filters of the media or the haze of distance, compels me to speak out about what I have seen and heard and especially how different my experience has been from the images I have seen on TV. 
I feel privileged to consider you and President Assad as friends. As friends, we all find ourselves in a moment of history that requires people of real commitment to stand up and speak loudly in support of constructive change and engagement. History teaches that to be ahead of the curve is to lead the change…

What is important now is for committed friends to be vocal in their support of President Assad’s leadership. After all, real friends stand up and speak the truth when it matters most. I will take my first hand understanding into the world and argue loudly and convincingly that President Assad, far from being the problem, is actually the most critical part of the solution… I stand ready to help in any way, at any time, and in any place.

That very same month, Clinton infamously called Assad a “reformer” and said that intervention in Syria was not necessary. Clinton later reversed her position and now supports regime change in Syria.