Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said he “doubts” his committee will be given access to Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
The Department of Justice gained access to the server Tuesday evening.
“Frankly, we haven’t asked for it,” the South Carolina Republican said Wednesday on Fox News. “We asked that it be turned over to [an inspector general] in March.”
Gowdy noted he was not interested in sifting through the emails himself, but that he wanted a “neutral, detached third party” to determine which records were responsive to Benghazi-related congressional requests.
He said Clinton’s lawyer, who helped decide which emails would be turned over to the State Department and which would be discarded, has thus far been the only party given access to the server.
“Her unique email arrangement is interfering with us figuring out what happened in Benghazi,” Gowdy said of Clinton, who is set to testify before the select committee Oct. 22.
Gowdy dismissed Clinton’s claims that she established the private server so she could carry just one device while traveling, an assertion that has since been proven false by evidence indicating she used several devices as secretary of state.
“It’s not about convenience, it’s about control,” Gowdy said. “She wanted to control access to the public record.”
The select committee has blasted State Department officials for their refusal to hand over documents related to the attack, arguing the agency has slowed the pace of the congressional investigation.
Clinton’s reliance on the private email server emerged from the Gowdy-led probe, although she has resisted the committee’s multiple calls to hand over the server to a third party.
She relinquished the server Tuesday in the face of pressure from an FBI investigation.
Gowdy noted in a statement Tuesday findings by the intelligence community inspector general that indicated “Secretary Clinton’s emails and server contained not just ‘top secret’ classified information, but ‘compartmented’ classified intelligence not releasable to foreigners,” which he said “must be noted in the timing of this announcement.”
“Congress, the media, the public, private litigants and FOIA requestors were denied access to public documents,” Gowdy added. “And recently the inspectors general for two separate executive branch entities expressed concern about the possible exposure of classified material as a direct result of her decision to eschew the email rules applicable to everyone else and create her own.”
