Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, already suffering from a stomach virus that forced her to cancel an overseas trip. has fainted and suffered a concussion, according to the State Department.
The 65-year-old Clinton, who’s expected to leave her job soon after serving as America’s top diplomat during President Barack Obama’s first term, is recovering at home after the incident last week and is being monitored by doctors, according to a statement by aide Philippe Reines.
No further details were immediately available.
The statement said Clinton was dehydrated because of the virus and that she fainted and sustained a concussion. She will continue to work from home in the week ahead and looks forward to being back in the office “soon,” the statement said.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee said it won’t hear from Clinton as planned at a Thursday morning hearing into the Sept. 11 attack against a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. She also was scheduled to testify that afternoon before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Clinton’s aides on Saturday informed the Senate committee chairman, Sen. John Kerry, about her health, and the Massachusetts Democrat “insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear” as planned, said Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth. Senior department officials are expected to testify instead.
Not that she would have shed any light on what happened in Benghazi, but she would have established a record that committee members could have then tried to verify. Unraveling what happened is going to involve pulling the “official” story apart one thread at a time. Clinton’s testimony would almost certainly would have been self-serving. But it may also have given avenues of investigation to the committee that they didn’t have previously.
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