Following revelations Clinton withheld more than dozen Benghazi-related emails
(Washington Examiner) – Calls for Hillary Clinton to allow a third party to examine her private server grew louder Friday following revelations that she had withheld more than a dozen Benghazi-related emails from the State Department.
“Secretary Clinton’s failure to turn over all Benghazi and Libya documents is the reason why we have been calling for an independent, third party review of her server,” Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, told the Washington Examiner.
“Her unusual email arrangement with herself allowed for Secretary Clinton to pick and choose which emails she deemed work related, and now we know that she failed to be honest and forthcoming with those emails to both the Select Committee and the State Department that were subpoenaed,” Westmoreland added.
A State Department spokesman said Friday the agency had no plans to launch a probe of Clinton’s private server, on which she hosted both her personal and work-related emails.
But officials did acknowledge that they had no idea whether Clinton submitted all of her work-related emails, as she has claimed to have done.
“This confirms doubts about the completeness of Clinton’s self-selected public record and raises serious questions about her decision to erase her personal server — especially before it could be analyzed by an independent, neutral third party arbiter,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the select committee, said Thursday evening.
Renewed scrutiny of Clinton’s private email use bubbled up this week after it became clear that Blumenthal had given Congress 60 emails that the State Department never provided.
The agency admitted Thursday it could not locate all or part of 15 of those messages.
“[Clinton] said she had ‘confidence’ that all relevant emails from her secret server were handed over,” Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Friday.
“But now there is proof that she wasn’t telling the truth. This is yet another reason she can’t be trusted,” Priebus said. “And it’s yet another reason that her server has to be turned about to an independent arbiter — to see if anything can be recovered after she wiped it.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said the only way to ensure the State Department has a complete record of Clinton’s emails is to locate and search the private server she used as secretary.
“This is something we’re raising now with the courts in a variety of cases,” Fitton said, noting that State has resisted calls to seek out the server.
Judicial Watch has filed more than 20 requeststhrough the Freedom of Information Act for records related to the Clinton email scandal.
“There is nothing in the history of the Freedom of Information Act or in the history of the Federal Records Act to compare with Mrs. Clinton’s decision to use a secret account to conduct her government business, and have other agency officials use that as well,” Fitton said.
“There was a whole cadre of State Department officials who went dark and were conducting government business in such a way that made it immune to scrutiny,” he added.
Gowdy has blasted the State Department for what he perceives as its reluctance to comply with congressional requests for Benghazi-related documents.
State Department officials have countered that the select committee’s ever-widening requests have drained resources and resulted in the possibility of documents falling through the cracks.
“The State Department also turned over a new set of Clinton emails that were responsive to previous committee requests regarding Libya and Benghazi, but for some reason were not previously given to the committee under subpoena,” Gowdy noted Thursday.
A State Department spokesperson told the Examiner the “new set of Clinton emails” provided to the committee were all the records in their possession that matched those submitted by Blumenthal earlier this month.
“These revelations raise questions that the committee will now be considering carefully in the days ahead,” Gowdy said, suggesting the committee may take additional action to ensure it obtains all of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pressure-for-third-party-review-of-hillary-emails/article/2567161
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