The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi wants to talk to Sidney Blumenthal, the former Hillary Clinton aide who ran a private intelligence network for the former secretary of state, Gawker has learned.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, confirmed the committee's interest in an interview with conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt that will air later this evening. "The committee will speak with Mr. Blumenthal," Pompeo told Hewitt. It was not immediately clear if Pompeo intended to call Blumenthal to testify publicly, or to interview him in private.

Update: Here is the interview.

Dana Chipman, the chief counsel to the committee, told Gawker that he couldn't confirm Pompeo's statement. But if the committee were to talk to Blumenthal, he said, it would most likely "seek to bring him in for a transcribed interview. [But] we have not formally invited him to do anything."

Blumenthal could not immediately be reached for comment.

The committee has been battling Clinton over access to her private email server. Gawker and ProPublica reported last week that, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal's account, he had been forwarding detailed intelligence memos on Benghazi and other matters to her private email address. The emails showed that Blumenthal had planned with Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA officer, to send a four-man team into Libya in 2011 at a cost of $60,000 on an undetermined mission.

They also showed that Blumenthal helped another former Clinton Administration official, former ambassador to Germany John Kornblum, lobby Clinton on behalf of Georgian politician Bidzina Ivanishvili, apparently in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Photo: Flickr

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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