Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff initially believed the State Department would provide the House Select Committee on Benghazi with fewer than one percent of Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary of state, messages published by WikiLeaks revealed on Monday.
The messages, obtained from campaign chairman John Podesta, show Clinton’s team discussing the issue on March 17, 2015. The exchange began with campaign press secretary Nick Merrill asking for input on a statement he had drafted in response to a subpoena from the committee demanding 55,000 emails from Clinton’s time at the State Department.
“Secretary Clinton has already turned all of her work emails over to the State Department, and the Department has turned everything over to the committee,” said Merrill’s proposed statement. “Representatives of Secretary Clinton’s office were in touch with the committee over the weekend to make clear that we want to make everything public, and we call on the committee to do so as soon as possible.”
Members of the team corrected Merrill. “We should not say State HAS turned over all that the Committee has asked for, just that we’ve requested State to do this,” replied Clinton attorney David Kendall.
Longtime Clinton confidante Philippe Reines noted that the committee, led by South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, would be unable to obtain the emails without cooperation from either Clinton or the State Department. “To be clear, there are and will likely remain only two parties who can release the full 55k: State and us. Nobody else will have them.
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“Gowdy will only end up with what’s relevant to his committee, which won’t grow that much beyond what he has. Probably not get anywhere close to 500,” Reines said. The committee at the time held around 300.
The campaign released a statement a little over a week later calling on the department to release the emails, despite the team’s confidence it would never happen. The statement, attributed to Merrill, said the campaign had “been in touch with the committee and the State Department to make clear that she would like her emails made public as soon as possible.”
The exchange took place just 15 days after news first broke that Clinton had maintained a private server as secretary of state. A federal judge ordered the State Department to turn more than 30,000 of the emails over five months later in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
