Exclusive: New GOP video rips Clinton over ‘old friends’

The Republican National Committee is accusing Hillary Clinton of keeping questionable allies.

In a new video released Tuesday and provided exclusively to The Hill, the RNC criticizes Clinton for paying longtime aide Sidney Blumenthal to report back on Libya. It also criticized her association with donors found guilty of financial crimes.

{mosads}Clinton reportedly paid $10,000 a month for Blumenthal, who did not hold an official role with the State Department during her tenure as Secretary, to report back on Libya. He also held business interests with those involved with the Libyan transitional government at the time he sent Clinton those reports. 

“Sidney Blumenthal is just one example of Hillary Clinton’s ‘many old friends’ who, like the Clintons, try to play by their own set of rules. We can’t allow the Clintons’ cronyism back into the White House,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement to The Hill.

As Republicans continue to spar in a crowded race for the nomination, the RNC has focused its eyes on its campaign to “Stop Hillary” ahead of the likely prospect of her securing the Democratic primary. The committee includes its pledge to stop Clinton on its homepage, which touts more than 105,000 online signatures.

Clinton currently leads the top Republican challengers in hypothetical general election matchups, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. But the margins between her and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) are within the margin of error. 

The new video doesn’t include a narrator—it instead relies on journalists to move the ad along, including Bloomberg’s John Heilemann, Fox News’ Brett Baier, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“There are two things that are true about the Clintons in this area. One they like people who work in the dark,” the ad quotes Heilemann saying on television last month.

“And they like loyalty. He has been loyal to her for a long time, and they like the kind of masters of the dark arts.”

More than a dozen of Blumenthal’s memos were released last week in State’s first release of emails related to the 2012 Benghazi attacks, showing that she forwarded many of them to her colleagues. On one occasion, she told department aides that Blumenthal’s information “strains credulity.”

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is expected to depose Blumenthal within days. 

When reporters asked Clinton about her relationship with Blumenthal in Iowa last month, she told reporters that he had sent her “unsolicited” emails.

“I have many, many old friends, and I always think it’s important, when you get into politics to have friends you had before you were in politics,” she said.

“I’m going to keep talking to my old friends whoever they are.”  

The video repeated that last sentence multiple times as it shifted from Blumenthal to three former donors found guilty on campaign finance violations.  And it ends by using Clinton’s strong words on then-Sen. Barack Obama’s associations with controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from the debate stage in 2008.

“As leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to,” she said during the ABC News debate in Philadelphia.