House Speaker John Boehner wants the Benghazi Committee to continue its effort to find the Hillary Clinton emails that Clinton’s lawyers say have been destroyed.
“They deleted all the Lois Lerner emails, but they keep finding them,” Boehner told a group of conservative journalists Thursday afternoon. “You know, these things just don’t go away. So I don’t know where the server is, I don’t know what condition it’s in, I have no idea, but the American people deserve the facts. That’s all. Just tell us what the facts are.”
Boehner does not want the House itself to search Clinton’s email system. “We have no interest in physically having the server,” he explained. “We think the Inspector General at the State Department is the right entity to look at the server, determine what’s private, what’s public and what’s mixed. They’ve got the ability to do that.”
Boehner’s words suggested that House leaders were surprised by Clinton’s choice to delete emails and then tell investigators that there was nothing at all on her secret email servers. “If you look at the resolution that set up the Benghazi Committee, they have the subpoena power to go after lots of documents,” Boehner said. “But the House has never subpoenaed a thing since the Nixon tapes. So it just wasn’t in the resolution.”
Nevertheless, Boehner does not want the House itself to conduct any searches of Clinton servers, if they actually exist at this point. “I just think it would be looked at as highly partisan,” Boehner said. “I just frankly think a third party is in a much better position to make this call than us.”
Whatever happens, Boehner appears in no mood to back down on Benghazi. “[Hillary Clinton] doesn’t have the right to decide what’s public and what’s private,” he said. “The secretary can’t continue to hide the truth from the American people.”
