Yet another lie from Hillary Clinton: Benghazi committee contradicts claim of no subpoena
The House Select Committee on Benghazi released Wednesday the March 4 subpoena for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, refuting her claim in a national TV interview that she was never subpoenaed.
The subpoena was issued directly to Mrs. Clinton after lawmakers became aware that she exclusively used personal email and an email server kept in her home for official business as America’s top diplomat, which removed her correspondence form the custody of the State Department and shielded it form being accessed by congressional investigators or public requests under the Freedom of Information Act, according to the committee.
“The committee has issued several subpoenas, but I have not sought to make them public,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the committee. “I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice in order to correct the inaccuracy.”
In an interview Tuesday with CNN, Mrs. Clinton insisted that she had not been subpoenaed for the email when she deleted more than 30,000 email she deemed personal and then wiped clean the server to prevent the email from being restored.
Mrs. Clinton turned over to the State Department about 55,000 pages of emails that she hand-picked to be reviewed and potentially released by agency.
“I’ve never had a subpoena,” Mrs. Clinton said in the interview, which was her first national TV interview since entering the presidential race three months ago.
“Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation,” she said. “Now I didn’t have to turn over anything. I chose to turn over 55,000 pages because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me because I knew the vast majority of everything that was official already was in the State Department system.”
Mrs. Clinton’s secretive email practices have become a focus of the committee investigating the 2012 terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. The email issue also has dogged Mrs. Clinton in her campaign for the 2016 for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Mr. Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, said that Mrs. Clinton had a statutory duty to preserve records form her entire time in office and a legal duty to cooperate fully and honestly with congressional investigators.
“Yet despite direct congressional inquiry, she refused to inform the public of her unusual email arrangement. This information only came to light because of a Select Committee request, not a voluntary decision to turn over records almost two years after leaving office, records which always should have been in State’s custody,” he said.
“Moreover, the timing of the Secretary’s decision to delete and attempt to permanently destroy emails is curious at best,” he continued. “The Secretary left office in February of 2013. By her own admission she did not delete or destroy emails until the fall of 2014, well after this Committee had been actively engaged in securing her emails from the Department of State. For 20 months, it was not too burdensome or cumbersome for the Secretary to house records on her personal server but mysteriously in the fall of 2014 she decided to delete and attempt to permanently destroy those same records.”
The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/8/hillary-clinton-caught-lie-benghazi-subpoena/
