Getty Clinton fundraisers report hearing from new donors after Biden bows out

Top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton said on a weekly conference call that they had already started hearing from new donors in the hours after Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not run in 2016, according to one person who was on the line.

The call, led by top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, came hours before the candidate’s Thursday congressional testimony on Benghazi, but it also touched on Biden. Abedin noted that Clinton had given Biden time and space to make his decision, and that they had spoken shortly after the vice president — her 2008 opponent and her former Senate colleague — delivered his announcement. Clinton for months refused to engage with reporters’ questions about Biden’s political plans, even when her campaign chairman John Podesta suggested after last week’s debate that time was running out for the vice president.


Abedin, the vice chair of Clinton’s campaign and a longtime aide to the former secretary of state, also alluded to the Democratic front-runner’s testimony, without giving away much of her plan. “I am sure you all have read the criticism of the committee,” Abedin told the fundraisers, according to the person on the line, in reference to accusations that the Republican-led panel is more geared at discrediting Clinton than getting to the bottom of the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

Both the Clinton campaign and its top supportive super PAC, Priorities USA Action, have released ads about the political nature of the committee, which has become the center of much tension in Washington ever since House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared to attribute a drop in Clinton’s poll numbers to the panel’s work.

But Abedin did not seem to suggest that Clinton would be entirely on the offensive: she made sure to note that Clinton would be honoring the memory of those who died and were injured in the September 2012 attack, and that she would be keeping them in mind while testifying.

Clinton's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.