Credit where credit is due: The House Select Committee On Benghazi is still irrelevant as it ever was, but Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC4) is finally starting to go the extra mile to try and change that:
Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina-4, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.
Mr. Gowdy’s chief interest, according to people briefed on the inquiry, is a series of memos that Mr. Blumenthal — who was not an employee of the State Department — wrote to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya before and after the death of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. According to emails obtained by the New York Times, Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable.
That email correspondence was sent from a second private email account that she's been insisting for the past two months she never had, BTW. So maybe the court-ordered drizzle will have an ongoing impact on her dubious nomination prospects after all.
But an examination by the Times suggests that Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement was more wide-ranging and more complicated than previously known, embodying the blurry lines between business, politics and philanthropy that have enriched and vexed the Clintons and their inner circle for years.
Enriched? Check. Empowered? Check. Vexed? When did that ever happen? Although it may be belatedly taking place now, as it is already emerging that while Barack Obama's motivation in deposing Khaddafy was to cede Libya to al Qaeda (now ISIS), La Clinton Nostra's was -what else? - pure greed:
Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government. The venture, which was ultimately unsuccessful, involved other Clinton friends, a private military contractor and one former C.I.A. spy seeking to get in on the ground floor of the new Libyan economy. …
It is not clear whether Mrs. Clinton or the State Department knew of Mr. Blumenthal’s interest in pursuing business in Libya; a State Department spokesman declined to say. Many aspects of Mr. Blumenthal’s involvement in the planned Libyan venture remain unclear.
To the contrary, it's crystal clear: Blumenthal was, as he's been for decades, one of La Clinton Nostra's top rainmakers (he was employed by the Clinton Foundation as well at the time) on the scene in Libya, setting up scores and paydays for Clinton, Inc. (of which he would receive his commission-esque cut), and if/when this particular skullduggery ever came to light in a future investigation, such as Trey Gowdy's, he would be the sword-faller-oner, the buffer/degree-of-separation/insulation protecting Mrs. Clinton herself:
At the time of the events in question, Blumenthal was also employed by the Clinton Foundation charity, which has been its own separate source of Clintonian conflict-of-interest scandal of late. In summary: In 2011 and 2012 Clinton, as Secretary of State, used an off-books email account to discuss national policy with a private citizen who might have been violating the law by participating in the conversation, who had a financial interest in the subject of his advice that he may or may not have disclosed to the government, and who was simultaneously employed by a nonprofit that has been accused of acting as the bag man for a Clinton[oid] influence-peddling operation.
Politically speaking, this isn’t a fire yet. But it’s getting hard to see that through all the smoke.
Which is precisely why the highest up the scalp chain this exercise will go is Blumenthal's. Because that's his ultimate role.
And don't get your hopes up on Chairman Gowdy being able to "flip" him into turning state's evidence against his boss. Remember, the Clintons aren't also known as the "Arkansas Mafia" for nothing. Just ask Vince Foster.
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