Hillary Clinton's Benghazi testimony has gone on for three and a half hours so far and, at the break, most of the cable news talking heads seemed to feel Clinton had acquitted herself well while the committee Republicans needed to up their game. Unfortunately for the Republicans' chances at coming out of this looking good, immediately before the break Chair Trey Gowdy promised much, much more talk about Sidney Blumenthal. Because talking endlessly about a guy who didn't work for the Obama administration and who most people outside of D.C. political circles have never heard of is super accessible and likely to convince undecided listeners that the Republicans have a strong point!
Republicans keep insisting that they're not carrying out a prosecution and then acting as prosecutors, which is a bad look on them particularly given House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's admission that the committee's aim is to attack Clinton and drive down her poll numbers. But if they don't act as prosecutors, they have less than the nearly nothing they currently have. They also went to the break on the insistence that they won't release Blumenthal's testimony even though they claim he's so central and important to what happened in Benghazi. Not exactly the kind of transparency that allays suspicions you're acting as partisans.
You can watch a live stream of the hearing here
Previous coverage of the hearing can be found here, here, here and here.
11:19 AM PT (Barbara Morrill): Committee Republicans vote down request for the release of the Blumenthal transcript. Cowards. Also, pathetic.
11:36 AM PT: Gowdy: How did Blumenthal have more access to you than Ambassador Stevens did? Clinton: Stevens had a contact in the State Department who was below me, who would have responded immediately. He did not register concerns with that person. He was an experienced diplomat who when wanting to address security issues, went to the security professionals.
Gowdy: Why was Victoria Nuland asking Stevens about messaging on violence in Libya after his security requests were denied? And why did Jake Sullivan forward a Blumenthal email to Stevens when there were security concerns? Clinton: Ambassadors deal with a lot of stuff on more than one subject. Stevens was committed to the U.S. staying in Libya and would have wanted to help convey the stakes of staying in Libya.
Gowdy follows Roskam's earlier strategy of pointing out that Clinton has gotten a note from her staff. What exactly are they getting at with that? Clinton is basically like, fine, I'll take the chance to make another angle on my previous point. But what Gowdy really wants to say is that Stevens needed security help, not to participate in messaging. No chance for Clinton to answer. Now on to message from Huma Abedin to Clinton about the Libyan people needing various supplies and Clinton answering quickly. Why didn't Clinton answer the messages she didn't get on security if she could answer that message?
Clinton says, again, that Stevens communicated regularly with her direct staff and did not raise security issues with them. Clinton communicated directly with him and he did not raise security issues with her. She knows it's not what the Republicans want to hear, on account of how they keep asking it in different ways, but it's the truth. Maybe he didn't raise it with the secretary and her staff because he was in a productive back and forth with security staff, with some requests being answered positively, so he may not have seen a need to bring it up with Clinton. But this is not the answer to the very particular nitpicky question Gowdy was asking, which is why did Huma Abedin and Sid Blumenthal—one of her closest aides and a longtime friend—get to email her directly when other people had to go through official channels? This feels way, way too deep in the weeds for anyone who is not a Benghazi obsessive. Clinton largely manages not to roll her eyes, but again hammers the point that Blumenthal was not her adviser but a friend trying to be helpful.
11:55 AM PT:
12:00 PM PT: The next two questioners are deep in the weeds. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) goes deep into Stevens' communications with the State Department and how his requests were received. Rep. Susan "Piles of emails" Brooks (R-IN) has killer questions like why, on a trip to Libya, did Clinton deal with Stevens' predecessor, Ambassador Gene Cretz, rather than with Stevens? Because Cretz was the ambassador... Brooks also goes hard on whether the Benghazi outpost would be kept open and how that decision would happen. Gowdy eventually cuts this line of questioning off as Brooks has used her time. I'm guessing Gowdy was relieved to be able to end that pointless flailing.
12:03 PM PT (Barbara Morrill): A few moments ago, this hearing is summed up neatly:
12:05 PM PT: Shorter, heavily paraphrased, Rep. Adam Smith (D-CA): Secretary Clinton, sit back and rest while I take apart a few of the contradictions and hypocrisies Republicans have displayed today. Not a prosecution, my ass.