http://www.nationalreview.com/node/423616/print Five Takeaways from Top Clinton Aides’ Latest Testimony on Capitol Hill
By Brendan Bordelon — September 4, 2015
Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal is drawing in those closest to her: Two top aides of the former secretary of state’s were called to testify behind closed doors on Capitol Hill this week. The House Select Committee on Benghazi grilled Jake Sullivan, a top policy aide who is rumored to be a shoo-in for the position of national security adviser in a future Clinton administration, on Friday. Cheryl Mills, one of Clinton’s longest-serving aides, spent eight hours testifying before the committee on Thursday.
The two have been accused of sending the lion’s share of classified e-mails discovered on Clinton’s server. Sullivan himself sent nearly a third of the 186 messages found to contain classified material. And both were daily fixtures in Clinton’s professional life.
Their testimonies are confidential, but based on leaks from the committee and telling statements from lawmakers, here are the key takeaways.
Mills testified that all of Clinton’s work-related e-mails were turned over.
Because Clinton and her staff determined which of the tens of thousands of e-mails stored on her private server were turned over to the State Department, Republican lawmakers have expressed concern that sensitive e-mails were withheld from the 55,000 pages of documents Clinton turned over in December. But according to Politico, a source familiar with Mills’s Thursday testimony said the Clinton aide told the committee that she turned over all messages concerning Clinton’s professional activities, and said that she did not destroy documents; withhold documents from the State Department; or know of anyone who did.
But Mills had no explanation for e-mails between Clinton and Sid Blumenthal that were not included in the initial document dump.
Before Clinton’s shadow adviser Sidney Blumenthal testified before the committee in June, he was compelled through a subpoena to turn over 120 pages of Libya- and Benghazi-related e-mails between Secretary Clinton and himself. Fifteen of those e-mails were not included in the documents Clinton turned over to the State Department. Republican lawmakers worry there were many more messages like this, and Mills reportedly had no explanation for how the Clinton camp failed to include the fifteen Blumenthal e-mails.
#share#
Mills did not sift through the e-mails herself, leaving the details to two Platte River Networks employees and another Clinton loyalist.
Though Mills oversaw the separation of Clinton’s personal e-mails from her work-related ones, she testified that she did not personally pull the e-mails from the server or sift through them to determine which messages fell into which category. She said that two employees from the private IT firm Platte River Networks initially pulled the e-mails from the server, and that Heather Samuelson, a lawyer who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, reportedly did most of the legwork, combing through the thousands of pages and delivering the pertinent e-mails to Mills and David Kendall, Clinton’s attorney. It’s safe to assume the Committee will summon Samuelson and the two Platte River employees to testify in the near future.
It’s not just about the e-mails — Benghazi remains a key point of concern.
With the news media focused on the question of Clinton’s private server, it’s easy to forget why the Select Committee on Benghazi was first assembled. But on Friday, the majority of Sullivan’s questioning seemed to revolve around the State Department’s policies in Libya, with Chairman Trey Gowdy arguing that Sullivan was in a “unique position” to talk about the Department’s physical presence in the country. And on Thursday, Mills admitted that she reviewed and suggested changes to the government’s official report on the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans there on September 11, 2012, an admission that alarmed GOP lawmakers already concerned that the report was altered to protect Clinton.
The high-profile testimonies rekindled partisan rancor over the congressional Benghazi investigation.
There’s no love lost between Democrats and Republicans on the Benghazi Committee. But Mills’s Thursday testimony seemed to be the breaking point for California Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff, who in an op-ed in Friday’s New York Times issued a call to “disband the Benghazi Committee.” The congressman argued that the “Select Committee [is] little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race.” Republican committee spokesman Jamal Ware pulled no punches in his response, noting in an e-mail to reporters that Schiff “has only attended one of the more-than-45 interviews conducted to date by the Select Committee on Benghazi.” He added that if Schiff “truly cared about Benghazi and getting to the truth . . . he would actually show up and help guide the direction of the investigation.”
