(The Hill) - Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Monday that the decision of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to wipe many emails from her in-home server might be “criminal in nature.”
Priebus noted while appearing on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends” that Clinton had deleted the emails in the midst of a congressional inquiry into the 2012 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and while the State Department was asking former secretaries to hand over some emails.
“I mean this is intentional behavior, which in many cases, Steve, is criminal in nature,” Priebus said. “I mean, you cannot just destroy documents when an agency is telling you to turn them over.”
Clinton says that she handed over emails that had anything to do with government business and then deleted the rest. She has characterized the deleted emails as personal in nature — ranging from communications about her ailing mother to messages about her daughter’s wedding.
On Friday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who is chairing a committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, said that Clinton “decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server.”
That prompted a quick rebuke from Priebus.
“Even Nixon didn’t destroy the tapes,” Priebus said in a statement on Saturday.
Priebus also questioned on Monday whether the emails were actually gone for good.
“And when you think about what it takes to wipe a server clean, you have to go to pretty great lengths to do that,” he said. “So the real question is, is the server actually wiped clean?”
Republicans are looking to capitalize on the questions over Clinton’s email practices as she prepares to launch a presidential campaign. An announcement of her intentions or an exploratory committee is expected in April.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/237332-rnc-chair-says-clinton-email-deletion-could-be-criminal
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