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Clinton Foundation paid Blumenthal $10K per month while he advised on Libya

Some officials at the charity grumbled that his hiring was a favor from the Clintons.

Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton, earned about $10,000 a month as a full-time employee of the Clinton Foundation while he was providing unsolicited intelligence on Libya to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to multiple sources familiar with the arrangement.

Blumenthal was added to the payroll of the Clintons’ global philanthropy in 2009 — not long after advising Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — at the behest of former president Bill Clinton, for whom he had worked in the White House, say the sources.

While Blumenthal’s foundation job focused on highlighting the legacy of Clinton’s presidency, some officials at the charity questioned his value and grumbled that his hiring was a favor from the Clintons, according to people familiar with the foundation. They say that, during a 2013 reform push, Blumenthal was moved to a consulting contract that came with a similar pay rate but without benefits — an arrangement that endured until March.

A Clinton loyalist who first earned the family’s trust as an aggressive combatant in the political battles of the 1990s, Blumenthal continues to work as a paid consultant to two groups supporting Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign — American Bridge and Media Matters — both of which are run by David Brock, a close ally of both Clinton and Blumenthal.

Yet Blumenthal’s financial and personal connections to the Clintons and their allies have emerged as subjects of intense scrutiny as Clinton seeks to gain momentum for her presidential campaign.

Blumenthal’s concurrent work for the foundation, the Brock groups and a pair of businesses seeking potentially lucrative contracts in Libya underscores the blurred lines between her State Department work and that of her family’s charitable and political enterprises.

Blumenthal has been subpoenaed by the U.S. House committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and Clinton’s handling of it. He is expected to testify next week about a series of memos containing sometimes specious intelligence on the situation in Libya, which he sent to Hillary Clinton’s personal email account.

The committee is said to be interested in exploring Blumenthal’s connections to any entity that may have stood to benefit from Clinton’s decisions in Libya. Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) also wants to probe how seriously the State Department took Blumenthal’s advice, which recently released emails show were met with skepticism at times.

Clinton, whose efforts to hire Blumenthal as an adviser at the State Department were rebuffed by top aides to President Barack Obama, last week defended her relationship with her old ally but also minimized his influence. Describing him as “a friend of mine for a long time,” Clinton, who also plans to testify before the committee, said “he sent me unsolicited emails which I passed on in some instances, and I say that that’s just part of the give and take.”

In his own statement last week, Blumenthal suggested that he did not write the memos on behalf of the foundation or any other entities with which he may have been associated, but rather as “a private citizen and friend” of Clinton’s.

His lawyer, former Deputy Attorney General James Cole, told POLITICO on Wednesday that Blumenthal did not have any financial interest in the efforts of the two companies pushing to win contracts in Libya — Osprey Global Solutions and Constellations Group.

“He never got any money from — and has no continuing relationship with — Osprey or Constellations,” said Cole.

The Clinton Foundation declined to comment.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/clinton-foundation-sidney-blumenthal-salary-libya-118359.html#ixzz3bS1slqFF