Benghazi Committee press conference on Clinton personal emails: transcript

Key points

• The committee learned of Clinton's use of personal email for official business late last summer, through documents that had not been given to other congressional committees.
• The chairman says she used private accounts in place of government email, and that the State Department only mentioned this when asked.
• The State Department cannot certify it has produced all her emails because it does not hold or control them all.
• The committee will send preservation letters, make further document requests, and follow up on records management, preservation and national security concerns.
• He refuses to release any emails selectively, calling the documents a mosaic that should be judged only in the final report.
• He says the revelation may lead to more conversations with Clinton, but it does not expand the inquiry beyond Benghazi.

Chapters

1. 0:00Opening statement on Clinton's personal email use
2. 1:49State Department cannot certify a complete record
3. 2:46Preservation letters and records concerns
4. 4:28Why the committee's work is still needed
5. 6:05Questions on releasing emails and a Clinton hearing
6. 9:27Scope of the inquiry and other committees
7. 11:25Records custodians and compliance
8. 14:56Closing remarks on a serious investigation

Full transcript

0:00Thank you very much for coming. I realize there are competing new sources today, so thank you for being here. From the beginning, I said the Benghazi Committee's investigation would go wherever the facts leave. One of those facts publicly revealed today was the use of personal emails by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to conduct official State Department business. It has been and will continue to be. Our track is not to discuss the details of our investigation while it is ongoing, but it is important to clarify issues relating to the committee in today's public reporting.

0:35The committee became aware of former Secretary Clinton's use of personal email accounts for official state business late last summer. The committee made this discovery and documents turned over to the Benghazi committee and these documents had never before been produced to any other congressional committee examining Benghazi. More recently, we discovered former Secretary Clinton relied exclusively on private email accounts to send and receive emails. It was not as if she had both an official and a private email account. She did not use personal email in addition to government email. She used personal email in lieu of government email. In other words, she used only private email accounts and She had more than one private email account, which is the point that I referenced but did not make explicitly during our last compliance hearing held with the State Department. Throughout all of our discussions with the State Department about productions, compliance and timing, the State Department neglected to mention this fact until specifically asked about it recently.

1:49The fact is the State Department cannot certify they have produced all of former Secretary Clinton's emails because they do not have all the former Secretary Clinton's emails nor do they control access to them. As the leader of the State Department, the former Secretary was responsible for setting the standards for preserving agency records. And knowing this does raise the question that the Secretary was doing what she was supposed to do under the law why would the State Department have to ask her for her emails back the State Department is relying on Secretary Clinton herself and her attorneys and advisors to tell us and to tell you what emails they think are to be preserved Congress has raised bipartisan concerns in the past about the use of personal emails to potentially convey official record-keeping requirements for many years and it is frankly nothing short but incredible that any official in the current administration would engage.

2:46In a practice such as that, we have maintained all along that we would invite Secretary Clinton to a hearing before the committee once we had all documents needed to have a productive conversation. And now you know why we said all. The State Department does not help all of Secretary Clinton's emails on its servers, only she has a complete record. And the committee is going to have to go to her and her attorneys and her email providers to ensure we have access to everything the American people are entitled to know there are many issues related to these issues the committee will continue examining and I am not an IT expert so I will not be exploring them with you today however many will be taking a number of detailed actions to follow up and these are including but not limited to the sending a person of preservation letters today to ensure that these materials we will be protected under the law as well as further document request and follow up with relevant officials on

3:48records management issues you do not need a law degree to have an understanding of how troubling this is there are chain of custody issues there are preservation of materials and documents issues there are spoliation of evidence issues there are best evidence issues in addition to asking about archives and what safeguards may have been in place to protect. This information, and one should also be concerned about the national security implications of former Secretary Clinton using exclusively personal email accounts for the conducting of official U.S. foreign policy.

4:28So, despite some attacks from those who claim that all questions regarding Benghazi have been asked and answered, the revelation Secretary Clinton used his personal email accounts lays that claim bare. it also lays bare the claim that any other committee has issued the definitive report on Benghazi the State Department never came full with this information which clearly should have been revealed to other committees reviewing the Gazi making any claim of a definitive report impossible the fact that Benghazi committee was able to uncover this previously unknown and before today unreported information speaks to the need for the Benghazi committee. The fact that the committee does not rush to trumpet every single discovery we make for the pendency of our investigation, and my judgment speaks to the commitment that the people behind me and Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Jordan have to conducting a fair and impartial investigation into what happened before, during, and after Benghazi. Our interest here is not in producing a storm.

5:29Our interest here is in gaining access to all of the documents. All of the emails, all of the witnesses, and producing a final, definitive accounting, and one that is, frankly, worthy of the sacrifice of our former fellow Americans, and worthy of the respect of our fellow citizens. And with that, I would be happy to give you that. Congressman, both Congressman Cumming and Jen Bush have called for these emails we made public. Do you plan to make them public?

6:05Um, let me initially note the irony of Congressman Cummings, uh, asking us to make emails public rather than asking the State Department or Secretary Clinton to make those emails public. I am not going to make any emails public. We have no idea whether this represents 10% of the document production, 50% of the document production. We in the past have not reduced, uh, have not produced information selectively. in my judgment it runs counter to a serious investigation to do so so no I'm not going to produce the email she's welcome to and I would frankly cut it mr. Cummings help in getting both Secretary Clinton and the State Department to make full compliance with all of our documents request not just for email okay I didn't even trouble as a result of he's still looking for the rest of these documents still premature then to invited Secretary Clinton to come testify to him? What do you intend to entitle this?

7:02That raises a very interesting question. And I think your question assumed a singular invitation. And in the past, I had thought that we would have a singular invitation to discuss the before, during and after Benghazi. This revelation, which we've known about, which has now been made public, may well lay the groundwork for additional conversations with the secretary in some setting or another.

7:33Are you troubled by anything you read in the email and what do you mean by trouble? Well, are you troubled by anything you come across in the email? It's something you've been wanting to do. It's a mosaic. Every email, every document helps create the picture of what happened in the gossip. So, you know, that's the danger whenever you selectively release or leak information is you give a disproportionate amount of attention and importance to whatever you believe, which is why we don't do it at the end we've been asked to write the final accounting of what happened before during and after so rather selectively highlight you know whatever exists today could be contradicted by something that's produced tomorrow Which is why you wait to the end and this report. I'm not making any judgments as to whether or not she violated any. I don't know. I'm not an expert. I can tell you this. Are you getting access to all the documents? Even separate aside from any statutory

8:51obligation there's an obligation of your public service to produce and provide documents when you are asked so by a committee of Congress and have a jurisdiction so separate apart from any regulatory or statutory obligation we want her emails and her documents that are relevant to being God I was a lawyer a long time ago and I was pretty like lousy when I was so I'm not familiar with. I wouldn't know how to answer what she is or is not given accounting for it.

9:27This revelation is Well, it's already very expensive. It says all policies, all activities and all decisions. So I don't know what to be more expensive than we're all. I mean, we're not going to go back to the beginning of time. It's still going to be centered to Benghazi. But this is not an invitation to expand the inquiry. This is an invitation for us to make sure that we do what the House asks us to do, which is all policies, all activities, all decisions relevant to the before, during, and after. But you cannot do that if you do not have all of the documents that would be in the care, custody, or control of the Secretary of State at the time. And the State Department doesn't have control over it.

10:09Some of the tangent, what's your reaction to the Petraeus? Do you think that damages his credibility before your committee? which is um i know what tim scott showed me on his uh iphone during netanyahu speaks today about that i don't even really know i know he played through an information i don't know what the information was so doesn't have any bearing we'd like to talk to him but beyond that you think that other committees are going to be investigating this you can still believe in your inquiry to Benghazi only when you said yourself that that's only a small part of the emails Well, anyone that would be interested in issues during her tenure would be interested in whether or not there are documents that exist that could inform and instruct that. I think I saw a press release from Chairman Chaffetz today. I think former Chairman Issa issued a press release. So, you know, there are other committees of jurisdiction that may have questions for Secretary Clinton that are separate apart from Benghazi. They may run into the same issue that we run into, which is if you ask the State Department, if I'm not

11:25to be able to help you hold on together are you saying separate apart from central obligation because that's you after a year after well that's what was the president's policy or folks in his administration will not be retention and the use of private email we're to the point of arguing yeah without what really a statute I don't have to follow it that's the that's the 20 and the person in hard to separate okay I just think it's good practice if you are conducting official business that you do so in a way where it provides a record right now we're in the position of having to go to her or her attorneys to ask for work that was done on behalf of the American people that was not contemplated by any statutory or regulatory scheme That's a great question that you never know. The best you can do is put someone who has access to the information under oath and have him or a verb that it has been a complete production. But that's true in any investigation, no matter what form, unless you're going to go in there and physically search it yourself. But you know, you ask a records custodian, which is what makes this so troubling. The records custodian should be at the state department. The records custodian should not be at the private law firm.

12:58It should be a State Department employee who transcends administrations that can come before Congress and swear or averb, you have everything consistent with this request. And the smart lawyers that work on our staff figure out how best to gain compliance and that would exclude them.

13:32They're working on it. They know what they're doing. It seems like you're a pretty smart lawyer. I have good facts. Yes, sir. You mentioned Mr. Jacobs. He said that you would be joining your committee to explore further. Could you give us a comment about what that was? If I had any idea what that man would. So have you spoken to Mr. Jacobs? In how long? In the past 36 hours. Oh, yeah. I did it with you last night. But we didn't get around. That wasn't on the agenda.

14:08I have not talked to Jason today yes ma'am to your knowledge did secretary Clinton use this private email address to correspond I do not know the answer I couldn't speak for myself and the answer would be no but I can't speak for anyone else you're welcome to ask anyone else you question to you or the documents you've already seen at the committee I I cannot represent that I have seen all 800 myself I've seen a lot and I've seen the summary I'm on stage If any other State Department officials are made to this investigation has been using the private account.

14:56I don't, but we're going to find out. Last question. You know, the answer to that question is necessarily going to seem self-serving, so I'm going to try to avoid that. investigation serious investigation require serious minded people in time I started off by saying I'm not interested in the story I'm interested in the documents and sometimes in Washington it's time we're interested in the story more so than we are the outcome and so I give credit to the folks behind me including Pompeo and Jordan they took this on if they wanted it to be serious They wanted it to be fact-centric.

15:47Not a one of you can cite to a leak that has taken place. We weren't the source of the New York Times article this morning. Serious investigations have to be run like adults and in a serious way. And it's painstaking, and it takes time. I mean, God knows. We've been asking for months and months and months for certain emails, and we just now find out those emails were never going to be produced because they don't have custody on them. You have to be persistent. and folks wouldn't work with us. Thank you.

16:17Thank you all.

Source and licence

Recording: File:House Benghazi Committee Press Conference on Secretary Clinton Email Revelations.ogv by United States House of Representatives (2015-03-04), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.