The U.S. Department of Justice has been asked to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Clinton abused classified government information during her tenure as Secretary of State when she used her personal email to conduct government business.
The New York Times reported that two inspectors general asked for the investigation after a memo from June 29 to Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, stated that Clinton’s private email account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.”
Clinton, who is currently a democratic presidential candidate, served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. Her use of a personal email account on a private server for government business was revealed in March.
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As Truth In Media previously reported, Clinton insisted that she “opted for convenience” when choosing to use her personal email, and she has denied that the account contains any classified information.
“I fully complied with every rule I was governed by,” Clinton said. “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”
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The New York Times noted that the Justice Department has not announced whether it will open a criminal investigation into Clinton’s actions, and that her campaign is claiming that “any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted.”
The State Department is now reviewing 55,000 pages of emails, looking for classified information. The New York Times reported that in the 3,000 pages of emails released on June 30, two dozen emails were redacted and labeled as “classified,” after being reviewed by the State Department.
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In a statement from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he said that the State Department has “used every excuse to avoid complying with fundamental requests for documents.”
“Our Committee has tried asking personally. Our Committee has tried letter requests. Our Committee has tried public hearings with other agency employees. Our Committee has tried subpoenas,” Gowdy said. “While the tactics tried have varied, the results have not. Our Committee is not in possession of all documents needed to do the work assigned to us.”
In response, some State Department officials have said they “do not have the resources or infrastructure to properly comply with all the requests,” while others have said that they “believe that many senior officials did not initially take the House committee seriously, which slowed document production and created an appearance of stonewalling.”
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Clinton was criticized in April when, after Gowdy claimed that she had been issued several subpoenas related to releasing her emails to the Benghazi Committee, she deleted all emails and wiped her server clean.
During an interview with CNN on July 7, Clinton accused Brianna Keilar of “making assumptions” regarding the subpoenas. “I’ve never had a subpoena, there’s nothing,” Clinton said.
Gowdy responded by releasing a copy of a subpoena sent to Clinton in March, and a statement where he claimed that while the Committee has “issued several subpoenas,” he had not intended to make them public.
“I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice in order to correct the inaccuracy,” Gowdy said.