"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," Rep. Trey Gowdy said. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images Gowdy implies Clinton friend Blumenthal fed information to Steele

Rep. Trey Gowdy implied Tuesday that information provided by longtime Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal was used by former British spy Christopher Steele.

During an interview on Fox News' "The Story," host Martha MacCallum asked Gowdy (R-S.C.) 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 information to 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.

Asked whether it was a foreign source, the South Carolina Republican said it was domestic.

"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."

"I am troubled by what I read in the documents with respect to the role the State Department played in the fall of 2016, including information that was used in a court proceeding," he said.

Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton friend, confidant and adviser, never worked at the State Department under President Barack Obama. He worked in the White House of President Bill Clinton and for the Clinton Foundation during Obama's tenure.

Blumenthal and Clinton couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Gowdy said he has known about an exchange of information outside and inside the State Department for more than a month.

"Everything that there is to know about it, and I have known about it for over a month," he said. "If you go and read the documents at the Department of Justice, you see it. I am troubled by it."

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Gowdy's comments came several days after the release of a Republican-drafted memo that alleged Justice Department officials relied on the dossier compiled by Steele to obtain a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump. The memo alleged that the application did not disclose that the dossier had partisan origins, though GOP officials acknowledge to POLITICO on Monday that it contained a footnote disclosing that.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee helped write the memo. He has said that his committee is currently investigating other departments, including the State Department, as part of its ongoing investigation.

Gowdy also critiqued a Democratic memo that aims to counter GOP allegations that the FBI abused its spying powers while investigating the president's 2016 campaign.

The House intelligence panel voted Monday in favor of making the Democratic document public, and Trump met Tuesday with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to discuss it.

Gowdy said that if portions of the memo are redacted, it's because Democrats want the American people to believe "there is something being hidden from" them.

"I think the Democrats are politically smart enough to put things in a memo that require either the bureau or the Department of Justice to say it needs to be redacted," he said. "Therefore it creates this belief that there is something being hidden from the American people."