A State Department spokesman admitted it’s “hard to know” how many work-related emails former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton failed to turn over to the agency.
“We don’t know the degree to which there may be other emails that another third party may have — in this case Mr. Blumenthal — that we do not have,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a press conference Friday.
He was responding to Thursday’s bombshell revelation that the agency did not have 15 Libya-related emails sent between Clinton and her longtime friend, Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal turned over 60 emails he sent to Clinton when she was in office. He provided the records to the House Select Committee on Benghazi last week.
In doing so, it quickly became apparent that Blumenthal’s emails included some exchanges which Clinton had not turned over to the State Department in December. (RELATED: Hillary’s Claim That She Gave State Department All Of Her Emails Falls Apart)
That despite Clinton’s confident assurance at a press conference in March that she “provided all…emails that could possibly be work-related” to the State Department.
Kirby mostly dodged reporters questions on Friday but was forced to admit the State Department has no way to determine how many other official government emails Clinton failed to turn over.
Cornered by a reporter about whether the discrepancy revealed in the Blumenthal emails indicates Clinton failed to turn over other records, Kirby said: “it would appear to be so.”
“Unless you have another inventory to check it against, like in this case we had Mr. Blumenthal’s emails, it’s hard to know,” Kirby said.
“We only knew about these 15 because Mr. Blumenthal had them and provided them to the Select Committee so there was something to check it against,” he added.
“I couldn’t possibly hypothesize about what other email traffic that might relate to Benghazi or Libya that we don’t have.”
Clinton has made it all but impossible to figure out just how many official records she failed to turn over. She has said her team went through her email account and picked out work-related emails and deleted the rest. Her attorney has also indicated to the Select Committee the personal server she used to maintain the email account has been wiped clean. That attorney, David Kendall, has also said Clinton will not turn over the server.
In his comments, Kirby took off the table the one sure way of knowing whether Clinton has been telling the truth. He said that the State Department has no plans to ask Clinton for her private email server. He also said the agency will not undertake an investigation into Clinton’s email gap.
“I know of no such investigation — certainly not by the State Department,” Kirby said.