WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of a House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi on Friday formally requested that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn over her email server for an independent review.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., sent a letter requesting that Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, turn over to the State Department inspector general or other third party the server she used for official State Department business. The aim would be to have a third party determine what records should be made public.
“Though Secretary Clinton alone is responsible for causing this issue, she alone does not get to determine its outcome,” Gowdy said in a statement. His request to turn over the server is “in the interest of transparency for the American people,” Gowdy said of the former secretary of state.
Clinton has pledged that all her work-related email will be made public but has acknowledged deleting thousands of messages related to personal matters. Clinton has said the server “will remain private.”
House 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.
Clinton is considered the Democratic front-runner if she decides to seek the presidency, and the high-profile Republican investigations are likely to dog her in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Meantime, the Justice Department said this week that it shouldn’t be required under the Freedom of Information Act to provide emails from Clinton that were sent from or received by her private account. Government lawyers said in a filing to a federal appeals court late Thursday that the FOIA law “creates no obligation for an agency to search for and produce records that it does not possess and control.”
The Justice Department acted on the State Department’s behalf in a lawsuit by Freedom Watch, a conservative group led by Larry Klayman, who has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons in the past. Klayman asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to hold the former secretary and top aide Cheryl Mills in criminal contempt in relation to its request for documents.
Klayman says the court also should issue a subpoena for the seizure and production of the computer file server that was used to store and process Clinton’s emails. The Justice Department said the requests should be denied.
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Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this story.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
How the hell does a rep just starting his third term get this gig? They must be grooming him for bigger things
I’ve thinking just the opposite.
Consider the downside here. First, none of him as “chair” of WTF this ‘committee’ is, not this special committee [it’s establishment being subject to a challenge concerning irregularity of being struck and in receipt of commission], nor the House as a whole has a sound legal basis for such a demand. There was no law, regulation or even policy directive in place that required the SoS to use a government specific server, and put the other way there was no law, regulation or policy directive that would render how HRC as SoS determined to handle her emails.
OTOH there IS a little weakass entry for an argument IF – big IF – Congress were to find some foundational basis for being concerned that HRC as a FORMER SoS failed her oath of office in declining or neglecting to cooperate with the National Archive regulation that was promulgated AFTER HRC left the DoS.
Congress has one advantage with that argument, but at least 4 disadvantages, any one of which will prove disabling.
Advantage:
Congress has that SCOTUS majority including 2 crazy people, Scalia and Thomas.
Disadvantages:
But regardless …
Congress can’t get past the current DC circuit, which is now, finally, predominantly Democratic appointees.
Assuming the House were to vote to issue a subpoena for the server ASAP, meaning absolutely no earlier than April and more likely not until the fall, all that does is start the clock running: THIS Congress will have to get past all the procedural and technical objections that HRC would be entitled to file and pursue, that go to standing and summary judgment, and the time those take could exhaust the time left between then and November 2016 – indeed, given past experience of the Bush admin running out the clock on Gonzo’s contempt, and the Obama admin running out the clock on the last Congress’s citation of Holder, this Congress won’t get anywhere near close to do that before recess in June for the election haul.
Even if Congress got it before a judge or a panel, it simply doesn’t have a case in law or in fact; IOW Congress would lose at the federal court level, before a lone judge, before a panel, and even en banc on appeal. Also, since there’s no compelling law that pertains, the current admin actually has status to intervene on behalf whichever side it chooses – for whatever limited purposes it can justify. It would here, for a whole bunch of reasons having to do with executive privilege, secrets and privacy.
Back to the first point: will the failure to nail HRC on this, plus her election in November 2016. mark Gowdy forever as being just another South Carolina southern while whacko pol?
I think so.
Ed Grimley is the Benghazi Panel Chair? https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm1.staticflickr.com%2F52%2F138763630_f8067bf569.jpg&f=1
Truer words were never written.
It’s unfortunate so many American’s cannot see through all this.