News

State received Libya emails Clinton did not disclose

by Mark Hensch - 06/25/15 8:22 PM ET

The State Department has received 15 emails involving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton it did not previously possess, a new report says.

A State official admitted Thursday evening that the agency could not previously find the messages from Clinton’s tenure as secretary there, according to The New York Times.

It said State discovered it lacked the communications following the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s release of roughly 60 emails it had acquired Monday.

{mosads}The panel gained the emails after interviewing Clinton’s longtime adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, earlier this month.

The messages could shed new light on Clinton’s activities before and after the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Radical Islamists stormed the U.S. consulate there, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in a coordinated attack on Sept. 11, 2012.

Blumenthal did not work for State during the attack, the Times said. He did routinely, however, send then-Secretary Clinton intelligence memos on Libya.

Benghazi panel Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) challenged State on Monday to verify whether it possessed the 60 correspondences Blumenthal first provided June 12.

The department cross-referenced those messages with 300 it had acquired from Clinton off her private email server last month.

The agency estimated it had received 25 memos from Blumenthal to Clinton while she was secretary of State.

The Benghazi panel’s 60 new emails were unveiled in 180 pages Monday documenting the time from February 2011 to December 2012.

They cite intelligence from a variety of sources, including some inside Libya’s transitional government, about security conditions during and after the country’s civil war.

Clinton has long argued she has turned over all State emails she kept while using a private server when she served as the agency’s head.

Critics have countered that Clinton’s use of a personal device for storing her government communications raises concerns about accountability and transparency — concerns that are already dogging the presidential hopeful on the 2016 campaign trail.

Tags Hillary Clinton Sidney Blumenthal