The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says Hillary Clinton had an obligation to preserve all of the emails from the private server she used while serving as secretary of State.
“Secretary Clinton had a statutory duty to preserve records from her time in office, she had a legal duty to cooperate and tell the truth with congressional investigators requesting her records, and she was personally subpoenaed the moment the Benghazi Committee became aware of her exclusive use of personal email and a server, and that the State department was not the custodian of her official record,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement.
His remarks came hours after Clinton defended using a personal email account and argued the unique arrangement did not break any existing laws or regulations.
{mosads}”Everything I did was permitted,” Clinton said in an interview with CNN. “There was no law, no regulation, there was nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to communicate.”
Questions over Clinton’s use of a private server have dogged her 2016 presidential bid since she announced her candidacy.
Gowdy and other Republicans have demanded Clinton turn the server, which her attorney says has been wiped clean of data, over to a neutral third-party who can conduct a forensic analysis and determine if any information can still be salvaged.
“For more than two years, Clinton never availed herself of the opportunity, even in response to a direct congressional inquiry, to inform the public of her unusual email arrangement designed to evade public transparency,” Gowdy said.
He said the State Department “should have informed congressional investigators years ago” about Clinton’s server.
“The fact of the matter is it took the Benghazi Committee to uncover Secretary Clinton’s use of personal email and a server to conduct official State Department business,” Gowdy said.
“And it was Benghazi Committee inquiries that led the State Department to confirm Clinton failed to turn over all emails that should be part of her public record; that Clinton’s personal emails and server in fact do contain classified information; that her emails from Sidney Blumenthal were solicited; and that she used more than one device for electronic communication, undercutting her ‘convenience’ claim,” he added.
Gowdy said that following Clinton’s comments, “the committee does not know why or when she chose to wipe clean her personal server, but we do know her way of doing things provided an incomplete public record.”