More evidence has emerged highlighting that Hillary Clinton did not turn all of her work related emails over to the State Department despite her public assurances.
Clinton signed a document declaring she had provided the State Department with all work-related emails. And during the Benghazi hearings last October, Clinton testified she had turned over “all my work related emails.” During that hearing, she was grilled about the missing emails in question.
A largely unreported section of the final Republican House Select Committee’s report on Benghazi, released two weeks ago, concludes that Clinton did not tell the truth about turning over her emails to the State Department. The report documents the committee obtained Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails from a private witness, correspondence that even the State Department did not have in its possession.
The 800-plus page report was reviewed in full by this reporter.
The report documents:
The State Department made two productions subsequent to February 13, 2015. The Committee received 105 email exchanges from the State Department on June 25, 2015. This production is significant because it was made only after a non-government witness provided 179 additional pages of email exchanges with the Secretary on June 12, 2015.
59 of the emails produced by the non-government witness had never been provided by the State Department to the Committee despite the fact these emails were clearly responsive to previous requests and fully within the jurisdiction of the Committee.
Moreover, the State Department did not have in its possession, in full or in part, 15 email exchanges produced by the nongovernment witness—calling into question the completeness of their records from the Secretary.
In their report, House Republicans pointed out that this finding proves Clinton lied about turning over required emails:
This means that not only was the State Department refusing to produce emails from the Secretary that were unquestionably relevant to this Committee’s investigation, it also laid bare the Secretary’s assurance that all public records had been returned to the State Department. Neither of those assertions was true.
When he announced last week that the agency would not recommend criminal charges against Clinton, FBI Director James Comey revealed that Clinton did not turn over all work-related emails.“The FBI … discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014,” stated Comey.
Added Comey, “It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that [Clinton and her team] did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all emails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.”
The omissions come even though Clinton signed a document, obtained by CNN, which declared, “While I do not know what information may be ‘responsive’ for purposes of this law suit, I have directed that all my e-mails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.”
Moreover, Clinton testified at the Benghazi hearings that she had turned over “all my work related emails.” After that statement, she was then confronted about the 15 missing emails by Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy. The final report shows the Republicans did not buy her explanation.
Here is a transcript of that section of Clinton’s testimony:
GOWDY: Let me ask you this. You say that you turned over everything. I don’t get a chance to watch you a lot on television, but when I see you are interviewed, you make a point of saying, I turned over everything.
CLINTON: All my work related emails, yes.
GOWDY: How do you know that?
CLINTON: I know that because there was an exhaustive search done under the supervision of my attorneys, and that is exactly the outcome. We turned over every work related email, in fact, as somebody referred to earlier, we turned over too many.
The State Department and the National Archives said there are 1,246 out of the 30,000-plus that they have already determined did not need to be turned over.
GOWDY: And you have a really…
SANCHEZ: Regular order, Mr. ChairmanGOWDY: … good group of attorneys, which makes me wonder…
SANCHEZ: Chairman, regular order.
GOWDY: … how they missed 15 of them.
CLINTON: Well if you are talking about Mr. Blumenthal, which I assume you are, he had some that I didn’t have, and I had some that he didn’t have. And he — I was under no obligation to make any of his emails available unless I decided they were work related.
And the ones that I decided that were work related I forwarded to the state.gov accounts of the people with whom I worked.
GOWDY: Madam Secretary, is there any question that the 15 that James Cole turned over to us were work related? There’s no ambiguity about that. They were work related.
CLINTON: No. They were from a personal friend, not any official government — not any government official. And they were, I determined on the basis of looking at them, what I thought was work related and what wasn’t. And some I didn’t even have time to read, Mr. Chairman.
GOWDY: So are you telling me the 15…
SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman, regular order.
GOWDY: Are you saying that the 15…
SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman…
GOWDY: I will tell the gentlelady from California that I’m going to take a little extra time, just like everybody else has, and that we can either do it this round, or we can do it next round.
SANCHEZ: May I make a simple inquiry about how many more minutes the chairman plans?
GOWDY: The fewer the interruptions, the quicker I can get done. I’ll put it to you that way. How’s that?
SANCHEZ: OK, just be mindful of the time.
GOWDY: The 15 — my question to you, on the 15, did your lawyers find them and decide that they were not work related or did they not find them?
CLINTON: Well, I don’t know why he had emails I didn’t. And I don’t know why, apparently, I had emails he didn’t. And all I can tell you is that I turned over every work related email in my possession.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
With research by Joshua Klein.