By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--June 16, 2015
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Earlier today, Dan posted this story about the IRS stonewalling over the release of "newly discovered" Lerner emails. Sadly, that's the least of this week’s email-related problems. The bigger story involves over 120 pages of correspondence between Hillary Clinton and her so-close-it's-shady confidant, Sidney Blumenthal.House GOP Benghazi investigators have discovered 60 new Libya communications between Sidney Blumenthal and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a congressional source told POLITICO on Monday — suggesting that either the State Department or the 2016 Democratic presidential contender withheld correspondence the panel had requested. The House Select Committee on Benghazi had quietly subpoenaed Blumenthal’s Libya emails. And on Friday, the longtime Clinton family friend — who is set to testify before investigators behind closed doors Tuesday morning — handed over 120 pages worth of new Libya- and Benghazi-related emails. “These emails were not previously produced to the Committee or released to the public, and they will help inform tomorrow’s deposition,” panel Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement late Monday evening. “We are prepared to release these emails.”Now the question is why these were withheld in the first place, and who was responsible for doing so. It's clear that either Hillary failed to turn them over to the State Department, or the State Department had them but failed to turn them over to Gowdy.
Clinton has said she and her team gave all her work-related correspondence over to State, which was then tasked with going through the emails and giving the panel relevant messages. Department officials turned up about 300 emails related to the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic compound that left four Americans dead. The congressional source did not know whether Clinton had turned over all the new emails to State and State did not provide them, or whether Clinton failed to hand over the correspondence.One suspects that this question will be among those facing Blumenthal this morning. So far, we have no idea what the new emails contain. They could be damning or they could be completely benign. Either way, if it turns out that Hillary purposely withheld these emails from the State Department and the committee - after she spent months claiming 100% transparency - it would be a massive blow to her already dismal "trustworthiness" numbers.
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