On Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conceded that she deleted nearly 30,000 emails that she deemed were “private” and not “work-related.”
Finally addressing the email scandal that has engulfed her for more than a week, Clinton said that she turned over nearly 30,000 emails and 55,000 pages of documents to the State Department.
She said “there were over 60,000 emails in total sent and received” on her private account while she was Secretary of state.
“About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal,” she added. “I had no reason to save them, and that was my decision.”
Her answer will surely raise more questions about whether she alone should have determined what emails should have been turned over to the government, especially after, as Breitbart News noted, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who chairs the House Select Benghazi Committee, said there were huge gaps in the emails his committee has received. Gowdy even “mentioned that his committee has not received any emails regarding Clinton’s trip to Libya even though the iconic picture of Clinton from that day shows her on a mobile device.”
“There are gaps of months and months and months. And if you think to that iconic picture of her on a C-17 flying to Libya, she has sunglasses on and she has her handheld device in her hand, we have no e-mails from that day. In fact, we have no e-mails from that trip, Gowdy said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “So, it’s strange credibility to believe that if you’re on your way to Libya to discuss Libyan policy that there’s not a single document that has been turned over to Congress. So, there are huge gaps. And with respect to the president, it’s not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what is a public record and what’s not.”
Clinton, though, repeatedly emphasized that it was her responsibility alone to determine which emails were personal, saying that “for any government employee it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what’s personal and what’s work related.”
“At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal e-mails,” she said, claiming that emails she deemed to be “private” dealt with yoga routines and planning Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. “No one wants their personal emails made public. And I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.”
When asked whether she would turn over her server to an independent arbiter, Clinton declared, “I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private.”
Regarding her personal email server, Clinton claimed it was set up for her husband and “there were no security breaches.” She also claimed that she did not email any classified email to anyone on her personal email account.
Clinton said she was “very confident in the process that we conducted.”
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