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Story highlights Hillary Clinton has faced controversy over keeping her State Department emails on a personal server Errol Louis: More damaging may be the potential conflicts revealed in the emails that are being released

The emails demonstrate that one of Clinton's main assets as a presidential candidate -- the alliances and personal connections she has painstakingly built over decades spent at the highest levels of government service -- can also be her greatest weakness.

Errol Louis

At least a dozen of the 296 emails made public are detailed missives from Sidney Blumenthal, a talented writer and ferocious partisan warrior who has been a defender of the Clinton family since Blumenthal, as a journalist, began writing one favorable analysis after another about then-Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas as he emerged on the national stage.

Blumenthal eventually traded in his press card for a White House pass, becoming a high-ranking adviser and speechwriter for the President though his impeachment and beyond, and authoring a book, "The Clinton Wars," detailing his days battling in the political trenches for Bill and Hillary.

As an adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, Blumenthal did enough damage during the bruising primary against Barack Obama that the administration later reportedly barred him from working for Clinton at the State Department.

Fast forward to 2012: the recently released emails show Blumenthal was back on Clinton duty at the height of the crisis that engulfed Libya in the chaotic months following the 2011 overthrow and death of ex-dictator Moammar Gadhafi, sending a stream of detailed memos to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the ins and outs of the power struggle among Libyan leaders seeking to replace Gadhafi.

Blumenthal's missives featured information on what he called private statements and thoughts of Yussef el Magariaf, a well-known leader of the opposition to Gadhafi who eventually became president of Libya's General National Congress and served as de facto leader of the country for about a year.

Clinton forwarded many of Blumenthal's emails for circulation to Jake Sullivan, her deputy chief of staff, who in some cases copied and pasted the information before sending it to top State Department officials as coming from "HRC friend," according to the New York Times.

Clinton made time to act on Blumenthal's information even in periods of emergency; Blumenthal even sent (and she circulated) emails on September 12, 2012, the day after a mob destroyed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and killed American personnel, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Read more:
Hillary Clinton's emails: A tangled mix of conflicts ...