Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) stated that “there are definitely Benghazi emails” that haven’t been turned over to his committee and “I’m going to be interviewing” Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “on October 22nd without all the documents that I’m entitled to” on Monday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.
When asked, “do you have those emails [between Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus] that apparently the Defense Department found?” Gowdy said, “I don’t think we have them yet, Greta, because they would not be within our jurisdiction. I noticed in your intro, you cited the most recent example that the public record is not complete, that she didn’t turn everything over. Of course, don’t forget, there were 15 emails to and from Sidney Blumenthal that she also never turned over to the State Department. So, this is just the latest piece of evidence that the record is not complete.”
He also stated, “the State Department is going through kind of non-Benghazi related requests, FOIA requests, media requests, and that’s at the end of every month. They gave us, on Friday, over 1,000 pages of her emails that they had never before given us. In fact, it was a larger amount of emails that they gave us Friday, than what they gave us earlier in the year when they claimed to give us everything. So, less than a month before Secretary Clinton comes before the committee, and three years after Benghazi, the State Department is still producing emails.”
When asked if he believes that he has all of Clinton’s emails, he responded, “No ma’am, we still don’t have them all. They gave a Vaughn Index as part of the litigation, there are definitely Benghazi emails that they have not turned over, and they’re not going to turn them over. They cite attorney-client privilege, because Cheryl Mills was an attorney. So, we would have to go to court for two years to be able to access that. … Well, you and I, if we were ever in the administration, we would just make sure and hire a chief of staff who happened to be an attorney, so we never had to turn anything over. But I would have to go to court to get a judge to kind of pierce that invocation of privilege, but no, we don’t have all the emails, and yes, I’m going to be interviewing her on October 22nd without all the documents that I’m entitled to, and you and I wouldn’t go to court like that, but this isn’t court.”
When asked how he would describe Clinton’s cooperation with the committee, Gowdy answered, “I like the word recalcitrant. It has — it’s a moving target, Greta. Every time she gives us an explanation for why she’s done what she’s done, or what she hasn’t done, that information winds up being demonstrably false, so, at some point, under the theory that even a broken clock is right twice a day. At some point, she’s going to stumble upon something that happens to be accurate, but so far she has not.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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