Blumenthal 'Very Confident' Emails Will Not Derail Hillary

Longtime Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal said Wednesday that he is "very confident" there will be no "bombshell" messages coming from Hillary Clinton's private email server that will derail her presidential campaign.

"My understanding is that this is a security review," Blumenthal told CNN's Alisyn Camerota on the network's "New Day" program. "It is certainly not a criminal investigation."

And, he said he believes the "inquiry into whether or not anyone intentionally put classified information where it shouldn't be" will conclude and then "all those who were involved in this kind of political hysteria will have to unravel it."

But Blumenthal does not believe that the Department of Justice's probe is a political investigation, and that it will be resolved as quickly as possible.

Clinton's likely opponent this fall, Donald Trump, does not want it resolved quickly, said Camerota, and he plans to make an issue of the investigation. Further, he has a new ad out about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, but Blumenthal said he does not think attacks along those lines will damage her campaign.

"There have been inquiries already that have concluded there is no wrongdoing," he told Camerota. "Let's see what this Benghazi committee winds up doing, and if it is inconsistent with the other ones in its core findings, then we might conclude that it is consistent instead with what House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, which it is a partisan political inquiry intended to upset Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign."

Meanwhile, Blumenthal said that he does not know why Clinton had a private email server, but denied having anything to do with setting it up. Some of the emails though, show him giving her advice on policy and politics, but he joked that he wrote to her and to Abraham Lincoln, who he recently released a book about, and only she had responded.

"The kind of politics that Lincoln had to deal with was as rough and tumble as the politics today and maybe even more so," said Blumenthal of the findings in his book, "A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 - 1849."

"He grew up on the frontier, and they were as contentious, combative as today. There were even duels as we know between people. And Lincoln was subjected to withering criticism, including racist criticism of him. So you know, what we're seeing today is not so different, and what Lincoln had to go through to achieve his ends, provides a lesson for us today."

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