Emails show Hillary's political sleuthing
By Josh Gerstein, POLITICO, September 1, 2015
A new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails made public by the State Department Monday night show her expressing interest in the presidential aspirations of Gen. David Petraeus, who ultimately took a job as CIA director in the Obama administration instead of running for president in 2012 and was then driven out of government by scandal.
Clinton--who's now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination next year--sounded intrigued when her longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal reported to her on a Saturday morning in February 2010 that prominent Washington foreign policy blogger Steve Clemons said Petraeus was talking frankly about the possibility of running for the White House.
"Clemons had dinner this week with Petraeus, who freely talked about running for president," Blumenthal wrote to Clinton.
"Will he write about Petraeus?" Clinton wrote back five minutes later.
Moments later, Blumenthal sent Clinton Clemons' post mentioning the off-the-record dinner and discussing the relative political merits of Petraeus, Vice President Joe Biden and Clinton herself.
"Clemons... told me more detail about [Petraeus'] attitude and interest," Blumenthal said, adding a couple of nuggets.
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