On Monday night, the major English and Spanish broadcast networks failed to cover the latest in the Clinton Foundation and e-mail scandals as The New York Times reported that the Clinton Foundation paid former Clinton administration official Sidney Blumenthal to advise Hillary Clinton on Libya while she was secretary of state despite the fact that he was banned from serving within the agency.
According to the Times’s Nick Confessore and Michael S. Schmidt, Blumenthal “wrote to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya before and after the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi” and communicated with Clinton via her private e-mail address that included “forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond.”
Declaring the interaction between Clinton and Blumenthal to have been “more wide-ranging and more complicated than previously known,” Confessore and Schmidt determined that the relationship “embod[ied] the blurry lines between business, politics and philanthropy that have enriched and vexed the Clintons and their inner circle for years.”
At the same time Blumenthal was assisting the now-Democratic presidential candidate, he was being paid by, among others, the Clinton Foundation “to help with research, ‘message guidance’ and planning of commemorative events.”
Confessore and Schmidt also noted that Blumenthal will reportedly be called by the House Select Committee on Benghazi to inquire about his business dealings and interactions with Clinton.
Near the end of their article, the pair write that Blumenthal’s e-mails to Clinton “circumvented the elaborate procedures established by the federal government to ensure that high-level officials are provided with vetted assessments of available intelligence.”
Going forward into the Tuesday morning newscasts, it has yet to be seen whether English-language networks ABC, CBS, and NBC or Spanish-language networks MundoFox, Telemundo, and Univision will cover this story that involves multiple parts and angles of the many scandals surrounding Clinton as she continues her presidential campaign.
