Sid Blumenthal was Hillary Clinton’s go-to guy as a journalist, as a White House aide and, we’ve just learned, as an informal adviser to the secretary of State on Libya.
And that took place while he happened to be working with some businessmen who were trying to land contracts in Libya—deals that would have required State Department approval.
What’s more, the information he provided was mostly lousy.
This remarkable story is contained in some of Hillary’s private emails, which have now been leaked to the New York Times. And they provide a flashback for those who endured the Clinton wars of the ’90s, when Blumenthal wound up testifying before a grand jury over his role in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.
The story is apparently based on information furnished by Trey Gowdy’s House Benghazi committee, which is prominently mentioned as planning to subpoena Blumenthal.
Clinton “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,” the Times says.
Hillary had wanted to hire Blumenthal when she took over the State Department, but that idea was blocked by President Obama’s aides.
The Blumenthal saga is yet another product of the tangled web of public, private, political and philanthropic networks created by the Clintons. At times it’s hard to separate the overlapping threads.
While working with the businessmen who saw Libya as a lucrative market, Blumenthal “was also employed by her family’s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help with research, ‘message guidance’ and the planning of commemorative events, according to foundation officials. During the same period, he also worked on and off as a paid consultant to Media Matters and American Bridge, organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign.”
Clinton, taking a few questions from reporters in Iowa yesterday for the first time in nearly a month, framed her response as a matter of reaching out.
"He’s been a friend of mine for a long time, he sent me unsolicited emails, which I passed on in some instances," she said. "And I see that that’s just part of the give-and-take. When you’re in the public eye, when you’re in an official position, I think you do have to work to make sure you’re not caught in a bubble and you only hear from a certain small group of people, and I’m going to keep talking to my old friends, whoever they are."
Since the reporter's question didn't include key details, Hillary avoided addressing the gist of the story, that he was giving her advice about Libya while pursuing business ventures there, and that the information he was relaying was deemed suspect or flat wrong.
A little background: Blumenthal toiled for years for the New Republic, the Washington Post and the New Yorker. The late editor of the New Republic, Michael Kelly, was so suspicious of his back-channel ties to the Clintons that he barred Blumenthal from the office. During the 1992 campaign, magazine writer Julia Reed later told me, Blumenthal urged her not to write a piece questioning Bill Clinton’s character. But what if it were true? “It doesn’t matter…This is too important,” she says Blumenthal told her. At the New Yorker, he refused to write about the Whitewater scandal.
When Hillary brought him into Bill’s second-term White House, cynics cracked that he would receive “back pay” for services rendered.
This is what I wrote soon after he made the move in 1997: “What is it about Sid Blumenthal that brings out the venom in the Washington media establishment?...Blumenthal, 48, whose wife also works for the White House, has somehow been branded as the capital's chief suck-up, a craven sellout who defended Bill and Hillary Clinton against the world even as he carefully cultivated them in private conversations.”
Bigger trouble lay ahead. In a sworn Senate deposition, Blumenthal said that while President Clinton had told him on the day the story broke in 1998 that Monica Lewinsky was a “stalker,” he himself had never repeated that to friends or his former colleagues in the press corps.
But that account was challenged by his longtime friend, the late Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, in a House affidavit: “Mr. Blumenthal stated that, Monica Lewinsky had been a 'stalker' and that the president was 'the victim' of a predatory and unstable sexually demanding young woman.”
Special prosecutor Ken Starr brought Blumenthal before a grand jury, where he refused to answer certain questions on grounds of executive privilege. No charges were ever brought.
Blumenthal sent Hillary at least 25 memos on Libya in 2011 and 2012, according to the Times piece. One was sent in 2012, as the new Libyan prime minister was trying to stabilize his government, talked up the influence of a man named Najib Obeida—without mentioning that Blumenthal’s business allies hoped that Obeida would finance their humanitarian projects in that country. Clinton forwarded the memo to her senior staff.
In the end, Blumenthal’s business pals failed to secure any business in Libya.
Any top government official is free to consult outside friends as a way of getting fresh thinking from outside the bureaucracy. What’s striking here is the overlapping of public service and private profit—exactly what the Clintons have been accused of with a foundation that, as it turns out, also employed Sidney Blumenthal.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy this past Friday. She started out by praising Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then she said something that showed complete lack of understanding of the nation and people of Israel. Clinton said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oBONzCBI0eM
Ho No Not again Hillary Clinton will run president 2016 and
Chelsea Clinton will go on the campaign this news report comes from AP look up to the future 2016. Patcnews Statement this really sucks Ewww Yuck Sick gross how can Liberals go for this ???
“I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion.”
“So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished.”
After her callous and thoughtless statements concerning Israel’s stand on the Palestinians, she attack their plan on constructing around 3,000 housing units on the West Bank and in east Jerusalem. Obviously she didn’t care that Israel had won that land with the blood of their people when she said:
“In light of today’s announcement, let me reiterate that this administration — like previous administrations — has been very clear with Israel that these activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace.”
I’m not Jewish, but I feel insulted by her statements. Does Clinton not know anything about the history of Israel? Does she not know that they fought long and hard to become a nation. Does she not understand that every nation that surrounds Israel has not only threatened to annihilate the Jewish people, but most of them have promised to do so? Does she not understand that the 6 Day War was not started by Israel, but the small nation did end it with a decisive victory over their enemies? Does she not understand how important the city of Jerusalem is to the Jewish people?
Obviously, Clinton has no concept of what the Israeli people have endured when she said they lacked generosity and empathy for the Palestinians who continually vow to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth. In lieu of her ignorant and thoughtless comments, I’m glad that Clinton is resigning from her position as Secretary of State. I only hope and pray that whoever Obama appoints to take her place will have a little bit more knowledge and understanding of Israeli history, but with Obama’s Muslim affinity, I doubt the next Secretary of State will be any better.
Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/8366/hillary-clinton-displays-ignorance-and-insults-israel/#ixzz2E178IvhL
Billary Clintons Emails and Clinton aide says Foundation paid for Chelsea’s wedding, WikiLeaks emails show ~ Former President Bill Clinton’s top aide wrote in 2012 that Chelsea Clinton used Clinton Foundation resources “for her wedding and life for a decade” and a top Foundation donor was responsible for “killing” unfavorable press coverage – all as an internal Foundation audit uncovered numerous conflicts of interest and “quid pro quo benefits,” according to emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks.
Doug Band, founder of global strategies company Teneo and Bill Clinton’s personal assistant since the 1990s, wrote the Jan. 4, 2012, email to future Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chair John Podesta and two other Clinton aides after receiving word that Chelsea had told “one of the [President] bush 43 kids” and others about “an internal investigation of money within the foundation.” Band wrote such chatter was “not smart.”
“The investigation into her getting paid for campaigning, using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade, taxes on money from her parents….,” Band wrote. “I hope that you will speak to her and end this[.] Once we go down this road….”
EMAIL DETAILS HOW TOP AIDES MADE EX-PRESIDENT CLINTON RICH
The FBI reportedly is looking into The Clinton Foundation, although the extent and focus of the investigation is unclear. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, had previously said some of the “personal” emails she deleted from her secret, homebrew server – the subject of another FBI probe – were related to Chelsea’s wedding.
Band’s email, which was revealed after Podesta’s Gmail account was hacked and subsequently uploaded to WikiLeaks, came at a time of turmoil and upheaval within The Clinton Foundation. Aside from the internal audit, previous emails show a prolonged effort to untangle Teneo from the Foundation. When Band launched the company in summer 2011, he was still employed by the Foundation and Bill Clinton was listed as a Teneo adviser.
But after much haggling, Clinton’s and Band’s roles were clearly delineated: Band continued on as a personal aide to Clinton and Clinton became a Teneo client. During the back-and-forth that produced the final document spelling out each of the men’s roles, Band on Nov. 12, 2011 wrote an 11-page memo outlining how Teneo was created and how it had helped to enrich Clinton and the Foundation. In that draft of the memo, Band wrote he had “sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and to raise funds for the Foundation.”
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President Bill Clinton, left, walks with aide Doug Band. (Georgetown.edu)
“I am sure I have done so imperfectly,” he added.
In another section of the memo, which was later deleted, Band wrote about billionaire hedge fund manager Marc Lasry as a “good example of the complex relationships a friend/supporter can have within the foundation.” Chelsea Clinton worked for Lasry, Lasry held Foundation fundraisers and Band was a paid adviser for Lasry’s firm, Avenue Capital, an investment company whose holding American Media Inc. publishes The National Enquirer.
But fundraisers and jobs weren’t Lasry’s lone contribution to Team Clinton.
“He has been helpful on a number of fronts, including … responding favorably to our requests to use his plane for Foundation and the Clintons’ personal purposes, killing potential unfavorable stories in the Enquirer [of which he owns a controlling share of the debt]…” Band wrote.
Less than a month after Band’s Teneo memo went out, lawyers from Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP, the firm contracted to run the internal Foundation audit, emailed a draft of a governance memorandum and recommendations to Podesta, who was serving as a special adviser to the Foundation, and Bruce Lindsey, then the Foundation’s CEO.
The audit draft noted substantial issues, including a Conflict-of-Interest Policy that had not been implemented, conflicts that were not disclosed in a timely fashion and board members not following the policy when they became aware of conflicts.
“In addition, some interviewees reported conflicts of those raising funds or donors, some of whom may have an expectation of quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts,” according to the Dec. 5, 2011, draft. Another section of the document noted that “interviewees also mentioned instances in which gifts and payments received by staff had not been properly disclosed.”
There were other problems, including 1,298 “complimentary” $20,000 memberships for the Clinton Global Initiative as opposed to just 500 paid memberships. Of the “complimentary” group, “276 were coded ‘discretionary,’” the audit noted.
“Interviewees informed us that there is no transparency into how the comp list is developed,” the document stated.
The lawyers conducting the audit also noticed problems in the Foundation’s IRS Form 990, the tax return document of an organization that is exempt from income tax. While charitable groups are allowed to pay board members and staff a reasonable salary, none of the reasonable compensation calculations identified by the lawyers were ever done, the 990 form showed. The lawyers also wrote the 990 indicated the Foundation had a written conflict-of-interest policy that was enforced.
“However, we did not find evidence of that enforcement,” the memo stated.
Other problems included a “very small” Foundation Board “comprised solely of ‘insiders’”; unsigned Board minutes that “appear to have been cloned from one year to the next; “material weaknesses” in the “segregation of accounting duties, review of journal entries, audit adjustments and financial statement preparation, and lack of Board meetings.” http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/06/clinton-aide-targets-chelsea-in-email-as-foundation-audit-shows-issues.html
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