In a statement issued tonight, the chairman of the House Benghazi Committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., indicated Hillary Clinton has turned over her private email server and several thumb drives to the Justice Department.
According to Gowdy, the items contain “emails with compartmentalized classified intelligence that [Clinton] had turned over to her personal attorney.”
[quote]This is a serious national security issue, and the seriousness of it should transcend normal, partisan politics. –Rep. Gowdy[/quote]
Earlier today, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community told members of Congress and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that classification officials have reviewed “two additional emails” among those Clinton sent or received as secretary of state on her private server “and judged that they contained classified State Department information when originated.”
Clinton has previously said she never sent or received any classified information.
More on the Inspector General’s letter to Congress
More from Gowdy’s statement:
“For months the Select Committee on Benghazi has called on Secretary Clinton to turn over her server to a neutral, detached third party for independent forensic examination. She refused every entreat. Secretary Clinton said she created this unusual email arrangement with herself for ‘convenience.’ It may have been convenient for her, but it has been troubling at multiple levels for the rest of the country. Congress, the media, the public, private litigants and FOIA requestors were denied access to public documents, 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.
The IC Inspector General revealed Secretary Clinton’s emails and server contained not just ‘top secret’ classified information, but ‘compartmented’ classified intelligence not releasable to foreigners, which must be noted in the timing of this announcement.
Both the ICIG and the State Department IG were nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate when it was controlled by Democrats. Secretary Clinton’s decision to prioritize her own convenience – and desire for control – over the security of our country’s intelligence should concern all people of good conscience.”
I realize the press has to report the facts — but it never stops them with Republicans, does it? So how about acknowledging the obvious point that she is handing them over now because she has scrubbed whatever incriminating evidence was on them?
The New Jersey firm that was holding the server said the server picked up by the FBI was blank. It was blank because the server was upgraded in 2013. So where is the upgraded server?