http://thehill.com/policy/defense/245708-benghazi-panel-releases-60-emails-from-clinton-adviser-blumenthal By Martin Matishak - 06/22/15 12:30 PM EDT
The House Select Committee on Benghazi on Monday released roughly 60 emails that former adviser Sidney Blumenthal sent to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State.
In releasing those emails, Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) rejected a request from the panel’s Democrats and Blumenthal’s attorney to release a transcript of the nearly nine-hour deposition that Blumenthal gave the committee last week.
“Releasing transcripts can impact the recollections of other witnesses, jeopardize the efficacy of the investigation, alert witnesses to lines of inquiry best not made public, and publicize personal information,” Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the panel’s top Democrat.
Gowdy said he would call a nonbusiness meeting of the select committee to discuss why Blumenthal’s transcript “should be treated differently from all others previously interviewed and all others to come.”
The chairman demanded that the State Department say whether it already possessed the messages from Blumenthal, which were sent to Clinton’s personal email server while she served as the nation’s top diplomat. Clinton, a Democrat running for president, has said that she turned over all work-related emails to State before erasing the remaining personal messages from her server.
Gowdy gave the department until the end of the day Monday to determine whether it has copies of the 60 Blumenthal emails.
In a statement, Cummings slammed Gowdy for releasing the emails but not the deposition.
"Before today, Chairman Gowdy had not officially released a single email from a single witness in this entire investigation, which has lasted more than a year. Now, he has apparently decided that this one witness is so critical that his emails — and his alone — must be released,” he said.
Gowdy, however, “refuses to release Mr. Blumenthal's deposition transcript, which includes his responses to hundreds of questions posed by Republicans about these very same emails and puts them in proper context.”
“By the Chairman's own admission, these emails have absolutely nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi, and their selective release demonstrates the Select Committee's singular focus on attacking Hillary Clinton and her bid for president,” according to Cummings.
Blumenthal turned the messages over to the select committee on June 12.
Last month, the State Department released nearly 300 emails from Clinton’s private email server that showed she received about 25 memos from Blumenthal regarding Libya while she was secretary of State.
During his marathon deposition last week, Blumenthal revealed he did not actually write or vet any of the messages he sent to Clinton. The memos were authored by Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA official who was on the ground in Libya.
The nearly 180 pages of emails released Monday stretch from February 2011 to December 2012. They cite intelligence from a number of sources, including sources inside the Libyan transitional government, about security conditions during and after the country’s civil war.
The memos also include a number of articles written about the conflict.
The batch of emails include one message, previously released, that blamed the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans on a "sacrilegious" Internet video depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
Blumenthal sent another memo the next day citing "sensitive sources" that believed the attack was an act of terrorism.
New Found Clinton Emails
