The Republican leader of the special Benghazi congressional committee is formally asking Hillary Clinton to allow access to the server that hosted her emails while she served as secretary of state.
“Though Secretary Clinton alone is responsible for causing this issue, she alone does not get to determine its outcome,” said Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who chairs the committee. “That is why in the interest of transparency for the American people, I am formally requesting she turn the server over to the State Department’s inspector general or a mutually agreeable third party.”
Gowdy sent the letter to Clinton’s attorney on Thursday.
Clinton, answering questions from reporters last week about her email practices, said she had no plans to turn over the server. Instead, she explained that she and her staff provided the state department with emails they deemed to be official business.
Gowdy, however, says someone else should be the judge of which emails from her private email account she needs to turn over.
“An independent analysis of the private server Secretary Clinton used for the official conduct of U.S. government business is the best way to remove politics and personal consideration from the equation,” Gowdy said in a Friday statement. “Having a neutral, third-party arbiter such as the State Department IG do a forensic analysis and document review is an eminently fair and reasonable means to determine what should be made public.”
Added Gowdy: “As I have said many times, we have no interest in Secretary Clinton’s personal emails, but the American people have a clear right to the public records from her time as secretary of State.”