Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Chairman of the Accountability Review Board that investigated the Benghazi terror attacks, said that “we did now, as far as I know” have access to all the information from Hillary Clinton’s emails, although he didn’t believe there was evidence “that would have pointed us toward those emails” on Monday’s “New Day” on CNN.
Pickering was asked “do you feel like you had access to all the information you wanted from Hillary Clinton’s emails when you were running that committee?” He responded, “we did not as far, as I know. And I’ve just rechecked, of course.”
Pickering added, “I would not say, however, there was any evidence we had that would have pointed us toward those emails. The e-mails we saw, we saw because we were interviewing individuals connected with the investigation. As you might recall, we were enjoined by the act of Congress passed a dozen years before Benghazi, that we were not to accept the view that the a cabinet head, department heads, by accepting their responsibility as a part of their job would be a suitable reason to find they had responsibility under the Accountability Review Board rules. We were enjoined to find where the decisions were made. And that’s what we did. And that’s the reason why we felt quite confident with the information we had at hand, and interviews that we had, that we had identified the people who had made the decision and made recommendations to the Secretary of State in that regard.”
When asked if he thought the e-mails would have been helpful, he responded “I don’t know. We won’t know, and I never speculate on unknowns until those e-mails are released and the issue is cleared up. What I would say was that we had no evidence, and everything else that we saw, including emails from lots of people, who were the people that we felt it was necessary to interview, because they were involved in the decision-making. There was no such evidence related to the Secretary of State, which is the reason why we didn’t pursue investigations in that direction further.”
(h/t The Right Scoop)
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.