NOVANEWS
Clinton fainted while she was dehydrated and suffered a concussion when she fell.
www.politico.com
The State Department said Saturday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion, but did not specify when that happened or the circumstances surrounding the incident.
She will not testify this week before House and Senate committees about the Sept. 11 attacks on Benghazi as scheduled, congressional sources said.
Clinton, 65, cancelled a trip to the Middle East and North Africa earlier this week because she had been suffering from a stomach flu.
Clinton’s fainting episode took place earlier this week, State spokesman Philippe Reines said Saturday, although he did not give additional details. On Thursday, asked by POLITICO during the day if she’d been hospitalized, Reines responded only that evening that she had seen her doctors and was home, without additional details. He said Saturday she was not and never had been hospitalized.
Reines did not respond to questions about why Clinton’s fainting was not disclosed sooner.
According to Reines’s Saturday statement, Clinton fainted while she was dehydrated and suffered a concussion when she fell. She is now recovering at home and is being attended to by doctors, he said.
A spokeswoman for Sen. John Kerry, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said Clinton’s office contacted Kerry Saturday about her concussion.
“Secretary Clinton’s team contacted Senator Kerry this morning to inform them of the secretary’s concussion,” Jodi Seth said. “Senator Kerry was relieved to hear that the Secretary is on the mend, but he insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear on Thursday as previously planned, and that the nation’s best interests are served by the report and hearings proceeding as scheduled with senior officials appearing in her place.”
Clinton will also be excused from testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said.
Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement released by her committee that Clinton eventually must testify about the Benghazi attacks.
