A House committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya, attacks issued subpoenas Wednesday for the emails of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who used a private account for official business when she was secretary of state — and also used a computer email server now traced back to her family’s New York home.
The subpoenas from the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi demanded additional material from Clinton and others related to Libya, spokesman Jamal D. Ware said. The panel also instructed technology companies to preserve any relevant documents in their possession.
The development on Capitol Hill came after the revelation that Clinton had a personal email server traced to her Chappaqua, N.Y., home. The unusual practice of a Cabinet-level official running her own email server would have given Clinton — who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign — significant ability to limit access to her message archives.
The practice also would complicate the State Department’s legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be the position of accepting Clinton’s assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control.
Congress said it learned last summer about Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct official State Department business during its investigation of the Benghazi attacks on a U.S. mission in which four Americans died.
“It doesn’t matter if the server was in Foggy Bottom, Chappaqua, or Bora Bora,” House Speaker John Boehner said. “The Benghazi Select Committee needs to see all of these emails, because the American people deserve all of the facts.”
The chairman of the Benghazi committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., told reporters: “I want the documents. Sooner rather than later.”
Democrats called it a fishing expedition.
“Everything I’ve seen so far has led me to believe that this is an effort to go after Hillary Clinton, period,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee.
The questions about Clinton’s email practices left the Obama administration in an awkward position. At one point, the State Department directed reporters to contact Clinton, who has not publicly commented about her emails. The White House said it was her responsibility to make sure any emails about official business weren’t deleted from her private server.
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In most cases, individuals who operate their own email servers are technical experts or users so concerned about issues of privacy and surveillance they take matters into their own hands.
Clinton — who emailed so frequently using her BlackBerry as secretary of state that it became an Internet meme — is particularly sensitive about disclosures of personal files based on her experiences in confronting congressional investigations and civil lawsuits during her husband’s election and presidency and her own roles as first lady, senator, presidential candidate and Cabinet official.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Clinton as Cabinet secretary never used a government email account on the agency’s separate network for sharing classified information, which Clinton would have been prohibited from forwarding to her private email account.
“She had other ways of communicating through classified email through her assistants or her staff, with people, when she needed to use a classified setting,” Harf said.
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