His is a type found far more often on the right in Washington, a partisan warrior who takes a critically sympathetic stance not just toward his issues but his chosen political party as well.

[13] Hearing John F. Kennedy reference The New York Times during a campaign rally he attended prompted him to begin reading that paper regularly.

[13] Geraldine Baum wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "In Blumenthal’s writings, Democrats stood for goodness and progress, Republicans for darkness and defeat.

His roles included advising the President on communications and public policy and serving as liaison between the White House and former colleagues in the Washington press corps.

He was also known for his often baseless attacks on her political adversaries, including Barack Obama when he ran against Hillary Clinton to be the 2008 Democratic nominee for president.

[1] In 1998, Christopher Hitchens submitted an affidavit that contradicted Blumenthal's testimony in which he stated that he never referred to Monica Lewinsky as a stalker.

[17] Arlen Specter even filed a motion to investigate possible perjury by Blumenthal;[18] however, Hitchens promised to withdraw his affidavit and nothing came of the matter.

The leadership of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives felt enough evidence existed in regard to the Paula Jones and Monika Lewinsky cases for impeachment proceedings to begin in December 1998.

Shortly thereafter, Blumenthal and Hitchens developed a close relationship, which included sharing dinners, attending important family events together, and trading opinions and information.

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: "Beyond his intention to set the record straight on controversies that plagued the Clinton presidency, Mr. Blumenthal has a more personal agenda.

Barely mentioning others close to the Clintons, and illustrating this memoir with smiling, convivial photographs of himself in their company ... Blumenthal sends a clear message to his administration colleagues: Mom liked me best.

'I once sat with the president and Tony Blair as, in about 15 minutes, the two men easily thrashed out a prickly trade problem involving bananas and cashmere,' he reveals.

"[30] Also in The New York Times, historian Robert Dallek wrote that Blumenthal's book was partly "an exercise in score settling" against his "tormentors".

"[31] Overall, Dallek praised the book, opining that "Blumenthal's sprawling 800-page memoir of his four years as a presidential assistant" was a "welcome addition to the literature on Bill Clinton's tumultuous second term", and also wrote that "Blumenthal brings a reporter's keen eye for telling detail and a columnist's talent for considered analysis and unmistakable opinion to his reconstruction of what he calls the Clinton wars.

[32] For Salon, Dwight Garner wrote that Blumenthal's pieces as Washington correspondent of The New Yorker "were so unabashedly pro-Clinton that they quickly became the butt of countless jokes.

[5] Blumenthal was a political consultant for the Emmy-award-winning HBO series Tanner '88, written by Garry Trudeau and directed by Robert Altman; he appeared as himself in one episode.

[40] While on a trip to advise Clinton on her presidential campaign, Blumenthal was arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI) in Nashua, New Hampshire, on January 7, 2008.

Two of them – Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Senior Adviser David Axelrod – threatened to quit if Blumenthal was hired.

"[1] They believed that "he [Blumenthal] had been involved in spreading unsubstantiated allegations against the Obamas during the 2008 Democratic primary" and Blumenthal was said to be "obsessed" about "the possible existence of a so-called 'whitey tape,' supposedly made at a Chicago church, in which Michelle Obama could be heard ranting against 'whitey'—a tape that could have changed Clinton's political fortunes during her primary fight, but that apparently did not in fact exist.

[44][45] During the 2011 uprising in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi, Blumenthal prepared, from public and other sources, about 25 memos which he sent as emails to Clinton in 2011 and 2012, which she shared through her aide, Jake Sullivan, with senior State Department personnel.

[46][47] The United States House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, subpoenaed Blumenthal in May 2015.

During this hearing Democratic members asked that Blumenthal's deposition transcript be made public so that comments regarding his involvement could be placed in context.

[55] Blumenthal was highly critical of George W. Bush and his administration for its use of torture,[56] for revealing the identity Valerie Plame as a CIA source,[57] and its response to Hurricane Katrina.

At the time, there were rumors that Colin Powell would run in the Republican presidential primaries, a prospect that terrified the Clinton re-election campaign.

"[43] During the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Blumenthal, then informally working for Hillary Clinton, promulgated rumors and encouraged news organizations to investigate conspiracy theories that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not the United States, and thus was not constitutionally eligible to serve as president per the natural-born-citizen clause.

A former Washington, D.C., bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, James Asher, said in a formal statement in the fall of 2016 that "Mr. Blumenthal and I [once] met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya.

[64] Blumenthal also attempted to dissuade journalists and reporters from writing negative pieces about the Whitewater controversy, Travelgate, and Bill Clinton's personal character.

Peter Boyer, a New Yorker writer, made allegations claiming Blumenthal tried to sabotage his story about the Travelgate affair.

[67] The couple married in 1976,[67] and have two sons, journalists Max,[68] editor of The Grayzone website,[69] and Paul Blumenthal, a political writer for HuffPost.