Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton works from a desk inside a C-17 military plane following her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya, Oct.18, 2011. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque – Associated Press)
The head of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said Sunday “huge gaps” in the timeline exist in the emails provided by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the congressional investigation into the 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, said his committee has received nothing pertaining to Clinton’s trip to Libya after the attack, which was popularized in a photo depicting her using a blackberry mobile device during a flight to that country.
“There are gaps of months and months and months,” Chairman Gowdy said. “If you think back to that iconic picture of her on that C-17 flying to Libya, she has her sunglasses on and she has her handheld device in her hand. We have no emails from that day. In fact we have no emails from that trip. There are huge gaps.”
Recent developments reveal Clinton used a private email account that was not properly documented for all official business while serving as President Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, a move that breaks White House regulations, State Department regulations and the Federal Records Act.
While Clinton has since asked the State Department to release some 55,000 pages of emails that she, a private law firm and aides hand-selected for disclosure, a State Department official said the review would take some time.
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According to Chairman Gowdy, who appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation, Clinton gave the House Select Committee on Benghazi just eight emails last August and another 300 in February, which were related to the attack. Last week, the committee subpoenaed the State Department for other emails.
“It strains credibility to believe that if you’re on your way to Libya to discuss Libyan policy, that there’s not a single document that has been turned over to Congress,” Gowdy said. “So there are huge gaps.”
“There are gaps of months and months and months,” Chairman Gowdy said. “If you think back to that iconic picture of her on that C-17 flying to Libya, she has her sunglasses on and she has her handheld device in her hand. We have no emails from that day. In fact we have no emails from that trip. There are huge gaps.”
The developments came a few days after PPD reported on bombshell emails obtained by Judicial Watch, which revealed top aides to Clinton always knew the Benghazi mission compound was under attack from a terrorist group. They discussed focusing on the fabricated story with each other rather than terrorism, and further indicate that Clinton herself lied to the victims’ families during the ceremony on Sept. 14, 2012.
The documents, which were obtained as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department, make no reference to a spontaneous demonstration or Internet video.
Unsurprisingly, the lawsuit requesting “any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack” including “but not limited to, notes, taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” returned heavily redacted emails from then-Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, Jacob Sullivan (then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy), and Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s Executive Assistant).
But no emails from Hillary Clinton, herself. Both Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan are on the partial list of notable witnesses to be questioned by the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
“A subpoena, which Trey Gowdy issued, is so that in fact it will be a crime if she knowingly withholds documents pursuant to subpoena,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said.
Jason Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives, said that the use of private e-mail accounts is meant to be reserved only for emergencies, such as when a department’s server is not working or compromised. He found it “very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business.”
Obama said on Saturday he only recently learned of Clinton’s private email account through “news reports,” a now common claim in the face of controversy of controversy surrounding members of his administration.
