Hillary Clinton’s close associate, Sidney Blumenthal, told her that former Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) might have committed a felony violation of the Espionage Act by disclosing classified information, according to email correspondence recently released by the State Department.
That’s another problem for Clinton’s team, because it shows they were aware of the laws governing the handling of classified information, even as they were transferring secret data from a closed government network into her home-brew, unprotected email network.
The email was uncovered by watchdog group Judicial Watch, which is still plugging away at a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pertaining to Clinton’s emails and the Benghazi attack.
The latest batch of documents released by the State Department includes an email from Blumenthal to Clinton suggesting that a grand jury and the Senate’s judiciary committee (then in Democrat hands) should go after Cantor for disclosing classified details from the FBI investigation of former CIA chief General David Petraeus — who was also brought down on charges of exposing classified documents.
It is difficult to escape the impression that Hillary Clinton knew that exposing classified documents was a bad thing.
Blumenthal, who wasn’t supposed to be working for Clinton while she was Secretary of State, sent his email on November 13, 2012. From its quotation by Judicial Watch:
Who else in the Congress besides congressmen Reichert and Cantor knew of the Petraeus investigation before it became public? How many congressional staffers were informed? What roles did they play in deciding who to inform about it? What were their communications among themselves and with others outside their offices if any? Did any of them discuss the matter with anyone in the Romney-Ryan campaign?
Why was Cantor intent on informing FBI Director Mueller of the existence of an FBI investigation that was already resolved?…
What were the internal discussions between Cantor and his staff on his referral to Mueller?…
[…] Was the supposedly rogue FBI agent, described in the Washington Post as motivated by his “worldview,” acting alone? Did he discuss the investigation with any individual either inside or outside the bureau before he went to Reichert and Cantor?
Disclosure of an espionage investigation is a felony. Will a grand jury be empaneled by the Justice Department?
When will Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee and a former FBI agent, begin an investigation of this matter?
“Reichert” refers to Rep. David Reichert (R-WA), who brought the FBI whistleblower to then-House Majority Leader Cantor’s attention.
Regarding Blumenthal’s comment about the FBI whistleblower’s “worldview,” a contemporaneous New York Times piece explains it well enough: the FBI agent “suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama” in the rapidly mushrooming Petraeus scandal.
The Petraeus scandal is recalled as relatively simple by our media, which has a very short attention span for complicated stories damaging to Democrat administrations: Petraeus exposed classified material to his biographer-turned-lover, Paula Broadwell.
However, the story was an ugly mess, as it unfolded during an election year, including allegations of cyber-stalking by Broadwell, and an effort to slander the politically inconvenient target of the cyber-stalking, Jill Kelley.
For the record, the FBI man referred to by Blumenthal doesn’t seem to have changed his “worldview” about political conspiracies to protect the Obama Administration much during the intervening years.
“It is beyond ironic that Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, her secret Clinton Foundation adviser at the State Department, discuss criminal prosecutions of Republicans for the handling of classified information over the Petraeus scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton about the new Clinton email release.
Fitton added that it was “disturbing that then-Secretary of State Clinton was involved in advising the Obama reelection campaign on how to continue lying about the Benghazi attack. No wonder Hillary Clinton tried to hide these email records rather than disclose them years ago as required by law.”
Here Fitton refers to other emails in the document release, which show Blumenthal offering political advice on how to parry criticism from Obama’s 2012 opponent, Mitt Romney, over the Benghazi scandal. Amusingly, Blumenthal accuses Romney of being dishonest about it, when Clinton and Obama’s prevarications and obfuscations have become legendary.
Most remarkably, there’s also an email from Blumenthal that talks frankly about what a disaster Libya had become, over a year after it was “liberated.” Blumenthal claims to be privy to “very sensitive sources” and “internal government discussions” at a “high level” in this memo, apparently referring to what passed for the government of Libya after Obama and Clinton got through with it.
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