House Benghazi panel subpoenas Hillary Clinton's email
The House committee investigating the 2012 U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya has issued subpoenas for the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The subpoenas cover "all communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton related to Libya and to the State Department for other individuals who have information pertinent to the investigation," said Jamal Ware, the committee's spokesman, in a statement. Ware also said the committee issued preservation letters to internet firms informing them of their legal obligation provide the relevant documents and ensuring that the documents are preserved.
"It's an effort to go after the documents that I would argue that you and I should have had access to all along," the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, said in an interview with Fox News before the subpoenas were formally announced. "I'm going to go wherever the facts take us."
Clinton's email has come under public scrutiny since revelations earlier this week that she used only her personal email account rather than a government address while at the State Department. Additionally, the Associated Press reported Wednesday that the computer server that transmitted and received Clinton's emails was traced back to an Internet service at her family's home in Chappaqua, New York.
Ware has said that of the emails they have received from Clinton relating to the Benghazi investigation came from "two separate and distinct email addresses" Clinton used while she was secretary of state.
"Without access to the relevant electronic information and stored data on the server--which was reportedly registered to her home--there is no way the Committee, or anyone else, can fully explain why the Committee uncovered two email addresses," Ware said in an earlier statement. "This is why former Secretary Clinton's exclusive use of personal emails to conduct official U.S. government business is so problematic and raises significant issues for transparency."
Clinton's team has defended her use of private email during her time in the administration.
"Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials," Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said earlier this week. "Both the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use non-government email, as long as appropriate records were preserved. As a result of State's request for our help to make sure they in fact were, that is what happened here. As the Department stated, it is in the process of updating its record preservation policies to bring them in line with its retention responsibilities."
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