|
 The State Department released emails on Monday that showed adviser
Sid Blumenthal sent Clinton exhaustive memos on domestic issues,
taking a more active role in advising her than was previously known.
He urged her to speak out against Tea Party conservatives and
encouraged her to get the White House to "rein in" a key Obama aide
who had upset him,
Her close links to Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill
Clinton, could rebound on the former first lady as she runs for the
Democratic nomination for the November 2016 presidential election.
She is under pressure for using a private email account instead of a
government one when she served as America's top diplomat from
2009-2013. Political opponents accuse her of sidestepping laws on
transparency and record-keeping.
Under orders from a judge, the State Department released a new batch
of 7,000 pages of Clinton emails from that period, casting some
light on how she handled her job.
 Blumenthal wrote frequently with forthright opinions both on foreign
policy issues like the Middle East but also about U.S. politics as
the 2010 midterm elections approached.
He asked Clinton and her husband to take a public stance against Tea
Party Republicans, who were poised to make electoral gains.
"Urgently, the momentum of the far right needs to be blunted; it
must be redefined; the political discussion must be shaped and
shifted," he wrote.
In an email entitled "DefCon 2," he warned Clinton that the
Democrats could lose the race for the Senate seat in Massachusetts
once held by the late Ted Kennedy.
[to top of second column] |
Also in 2010, Blumenthal encouraged Clinton to have the White House
"rein in" Obama's senior advisor, David Axelrod, for straying too
much into the foreign policy area.
"Axelrod has enough to do fixing the domestic messes he's made,"
Blumenthal wrote, telling Clinton which of her aides should speak to
a senior White House staffer about the issue.
Republicans in Congress have sought to put a spotlight on former
journalist Blumenthal's influence over Clinton on Libya as it
descended into chaos in 2011. In May, Clinton said his advice helped
her avoid being "caught in the bubble" of official information.
The State Department said on Monday that about 150 more of Clinton's
work emails have recently been designated as containing classified
information.
Clinton has said she sent no information via email that was
classified at the time and received none marked that way.
(Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson, Erin McPike, John
Whitesides, Emily Stephenson and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Nick
Macfie)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
