House

Boehner: Full House may subpoena Clinton emails

by Scott Wong - 04/23/15 9:55 PM ET

White House hopeful Hillary Clinton “violated the law,” when she used a personal email address to conduct official business as secretary of State, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday, adding that the full House might vote to subpoena Clinton’s private email server if she doesn’t hand it over.

“All options are on the table,” Boehner said in an interview on Bloomberg’s politics show “With All Due Respect.” “If we need to do that, we may have to.”

“The idea that [Clinton] was going to use her own server and do official business on it goes against every transparency issue that the president likes to tout,” Boehner continued.

{mosads}“At some point, they just can’t ignore the fact that there a lot of public documents on this server that the American people have a right to see.”

Republicans, Boehner said, believe Clinton should turn over her emails — stored on her personal server — to the State Department’s inspector general. The IG can “sort out what’s official, what’s private,” especially as it relates to the 2012 attack on diplomatic installations in Benghazi, Libya, Boehner said.

“It’s important for the American people to know the truth about what happened in Benghazi,” he said. “It’s important to know what was going on at the State Department before, during and after the events that occurred in Libya.”

The Speaker, a longtime veteran of Washington, has known both Bill and Hillary Clinton for decades, calling them “good public servants.”

“But there are a lot of questions that are being raised,” he said. “And at some point, they are going to have to answer the questions.”

Pressed again whether the Clintons are ethically and morally fit to occupy the White House again, Boehner replied, “They are good people.”

Boehner conceded Hillary Clinton is a formidable candidate and could be the first woman to be president.

Her odds are “50-50,” he said.

Boehner’s made it no secret that he’s a Jeb Bush fan, saying Bush has a solid, conservative track record from when he served as Florida governor.

“Obviously he’s got a handicap: His name is Bush,” Boehner said. It will take people awhile to realize “he’s not George, and he’s not his dad.”

Tags John Boehner