The State Department said Hillary Clinton did not submit 15 emails it later received copies of from her longtime adviser, Sidney Blumenthal. File photo by A.J. Sisco/UPI |
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WASHINGTON, June 25 (UPI) -- Though former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she gave all work-related emails from her private server to the State Department, the department said it was handed 15 emails from her adviser that it did not previously have.
The State Department said Thursday that Clinton did not release to it 15 emails exchanged between herself and her friend -- and unofficial adviser -- Sidney Blumenthal. He did not work for the State Department at the time the emails were exchanged, but he often sent her intelligence memos on the situation in Libya.
Blumenthal submitted the emails as part of a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
When the State Department received copies of these 15 emails, it could not find them in its archive of some 30,000 emails Clinton submitted to the department. She had told the department she deleted about the same number of emails that were private or personal.
"We have confirmed that the emails Secretary Clinton provided the department include almost all of the material in Mr. Blumenthal's production," an official told CNN. "There here are, however, a limited number of instances 15 in which we could not locate all or part of the content of a document from his production within the tens of thousands of emails she gave us."
The discrepancy could prompt House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to subpoena the entire server, including all of Clinton's personal emails, The New York Times reported.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., says the incident casts doubt on the completeness of Clinton's disclosure.
"This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi and our committee's work. This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record," Gowdy said in a statement released Thursday.
"These new messages in many instances were Clinton's responses, which clearly show she was soliciting and regularly corresponding with Sidney Blumenthal—who was passing unvetted intelligence information about Libya from a source with a financial interest in the country. It just so happens these emails directly contradict her public statement that the messages from Blumenthal were unsolicited."
