Sid Blumenthal, widely known as Sid Vicious, is the bad penny of American political life. He keeps turning up in major scandals — e.g., the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair and the Libya fiasco. In addition, as Eli Lake has pointed out, we learned of Hillary Clinton’s private email server because Blumenthal’s own e-mail was breached by Marcel Lehel Lazar, a Romanian hacker who goes by the moniker Guccifer.

Therefore, we should not be surprised that Trey Gowdy has pretty much said Blumenthal fed information to Christopher Steele in an effort to aid Steele in his quest to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. Rebecca Morin of Politico reports:

During an interview on Fox News’ “The Story,” host Martha MacCallum asked Gowdy whether “weeks before the election, somebody in the Obama State Department was feeding information from a foreign source to Christopher Steele.” MacCallum had previously asked whether Gowdy knew anything about “a source who gave an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton who then gave information to an unnamed official in the Obama state department who then gave the information to Steele.” “When you hear who the source, one of the sources of that information is, you’re going to think, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’ve heard that name somewhere before. Where could it possibly have been?'” Gowdy replied. . . . “I’m trying to think of how Secretary Clinton defined him. I think she said he was an old friend who emailed her from time to time,” Gowdy said. Asked whether it was Blumenthal, Gowdy said: “That would be really warm. You’re warm.”

Hillary Clinton, of course, characterized Blumenthal as an old friend who emailed her from time to time when she was attempting to downplay his role in setting her disastrous Libya policy. He never formally worked for the Clinton State Department. Team Obama, which hated him, made sure of that. However, he was able to influence Clinton based on his “friendship” and emails.

Gowdy’s comments are consistent with the request by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham that the Justice Department criminally investigate Steele. Their referral states that a foreign source gave information to an unnamed associate of the Clintons, who then gave information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who then gave the information to Steele.

Steele was working for the Clinton campaign. Thus, when he used Russian sources, many of whom undoubtedly had Kremlin connections, the Clinton campaign was “colluding” with the Russians. In addition, when the Justice Department submitted Steele’s dossier to a court, it was using Team Clinton’s research as a basis for obtaining a warrant to spy Carter Page and anyone in the Trump campaign he might talk to.

Blumenthal’s involvement adds another layer. Team Clinton wasn’t just paying Steele to dig up dirt, it was providing dirt to Steele, via Hillary’s friend Blumenthal and, if I read the Grassley-Graham referral correctly, an unnamed official in the Obama State Department.

I’m interested in knowing who Blumenthal’s “foreign source” was. A Russian, perhaps?

Regardless, it now appears that Team Clinton didn’t just pay for the dossier, it helped manufacture it. And though its efforts weren’t sufficient to secure the big prize for Hillary, they provided the solace of making life difficult for the man who, as the Clintonistas want us to see things, stole the big prize from her.