Hillary Rodham Clinton wiped her e-mail server “clean,” permanently deleting all e-mails from it, the Republican chairman of a US House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, said on Friday.
US Representative Trey Gowdy said the former secretary of state has failed to produce a single new document in recent weeks and has refused to relinquish her server to a third party for an independent review, as Gowdy has requested.
Clinton, the presumptive frontrunner for the US Democratic presidential nomination, faced a Friday deadline to respond to a subpoena for e-mails and documents related to Libya, including the 2012 attacks on a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi that killed four US citizens, including the US ambassador to Libya. The attention to Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account and server has threatened to become a distraction as she prepares to launch her campaign.
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Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, said Gowdy was looking in the wrong place.
In a six-page letter released late on Friday, Kendall said Clinton had turned over to the US Department of State all work-related e-mails sent or received during her tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
“The Department of State is therefore in possession of all secretary Clinton’s work-related e-mails from the [personal e-mail] account,” Kendall wrote.
Kendall also said it would be pointless for Clinton to turn over her server, even if legally authorized, since “no e-mails ... reside on the server or on any backup systems associated with the server.”
The Benghazi committee demanded further documents and access to the server after it was revealed that Clinton used a private e-mail account and server during her tenure at the Department of State.
Gowdy said he will work with House leaders to consider options. Speaker John Boehner has not ruled out a vote in the full House to force Clinton to turn over the server if she declines to make it available by a Friday deadline set by Gowdy.
US Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Benghazi panel, said Kendall’s letter confirmed “what we all knew: that secretary Clinton already produced her official records to the State Department, that she did not keep her personal e-mails and that the Select Committee has already obtained her e-mails relating to the attacks in Benghazi.”
In a statement released later on Friday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said she “would like her e-mails made public as soon as possible and ... she’s ready and willing to come and appear herself for a hearing open to the American public.”
Kendall said in his letter that Clinton’s personal attorneys reviewed every e-mail sent and received from her private e-mail address — 62,320 e-mails in total — and identified all work-related e-mails. Those totaled 30,490 e-mails, or approximately 55,000 pages. The material was provided to the Department of State on Dec. 5 last year and it is at the agency’s discretion to release those e-mails after a review.
Kendall said Clinton has asked for the release of all of those e-mails. He said the Department of State is reviewing the material to decide whether any sensitive information needs to be protected.
“Secretary Clinton is not in a position to produce any of those e-mails to the committee in response to the subpoena without approval from the State Department, which could come only following a review process,” Kendall wrote.
Gowdy said he was disappointed at Clinton’s lack of cooperation.
“Not only was the secretary the sole arbiter of what was a public record, she also summarily decided to delete all e-mails from her server, ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest,” he said.
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