Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, says he is not confident the State Department can be a neutral arbiter of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s records amid the controversy over Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private e-mail during her time as the nation’s top diplomat.
Mr. Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said Monday evening on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” that the State Department “is not the neutral third party arbiter that I would recommend the secretary turn her server over to so you can analyze it for forensics to see whether or not there’s been any hacking or tampering.”
“I have no interest in e-mails about bridesmaids’ dresses or wedding cakes — it’s none of my business,” he said. “But public records are all of our business and that subset that deals with Benghazi is particularly our committee’s business.”
According to published reports, Mrs. Clinton could publicly address the issue soon. She did not do so when she spoke at an event in New York on Monday; she was scheduled to speak at a United Nations event Tuesday afternoon. Her only public comment on the matter thus far came when she tweeted that she wanted the public to see her emails.
Mr. Gowdy said that in August, they were seeing her personal e-mail but no official e-mail.
“I wrote her lawyer and said ’I need emails from your client’ — he referred me back to the State Department,” he said. “We learned the day before The New York Times article broke that she did not have any official email account and that the State Department had no idea whether or not we had all the records, ’cause they didn’t have all the records.”
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State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Mrs. Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of unclassified emails to the department but that it’s not clear when they’ll be released, and that the department has turned over emails related to the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya to Congress.
“The State Department had six months to have the conversation you and I are just having — so shame on me for taking six months, but really shame on me if I trust the State Department to be that neutral, detached arbiter of her records, ’cause they failed in the past to do so,” Mr. Gowdy said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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