Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over to the U.S. State Department all the work-related e-mail from her personal account relating to Libya and Benghazi, as she had previously said she had.

Nine e-mails and parts of six others couldn’t be found among documents Clinton provided in response to a request from the State Department, the agency said in a letter to the Select House Committee investigating the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi.

U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, chairman of the panel, said Clinton’s selection of e-mails to provide to the State Department resulted in an incomplete public record. Clinton, now the leading Democratic presidential candidate, exclusively used a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state.

“The revelation these messages were not originally produced to the State Department by Clinton is significant and troubling,” he said.

Clinton’s use of a private e-mail address and home server has become a focus of the House committee’s probe of the Obama administration’s handling of attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi and a nearby Central Intelligence Agency outpost that killed four Americans. It’s also become a distraction for Clinton as she campaigns for president.

Document Production

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, said “she has turned over 55,000 pages of materials to the State Department.”

In December, Clinton turned over about 30,000 e-mails to the department. About 850 pages that the State Department deemed Benghazi-related were turned over to the House committee in February.

The New York Times reported earlier that the State Department said Clinton hadn’t handed over several Libya-related e-mails.

The 15 missing or incomplete e-mails aren’t related to the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, according to a statement from the State Department. The latest date on any of them is two weeks before the attacks, according to the statement.

All of the e-mails are exchanges between Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time Clinton confidant, and are work-related, according to the State Department. The existence of the e-mails came to light after Blumenthal, who was subpoenaed to appear before the House panel investigating Benghazi, turned over copies of communications with Clinton to the committee.

Libya Memos

Lawmakers complained about e-mails that they said either weren’t provided by Clinton to the State Department or by the department to the panel in response to its request.

Merrill said Clinton turned over “all e-mails in her possession from Mr. Blumenthal.”

Blumenthal, though not employed at the State Department at the time, providing Clinton with memos about Libya.

Topics among the nine e-mails produced by Blumenthal that were missing entirely from those turned over by Clinton included the death of Muammar Qaddafi’s son, the suspicious death in Austria of a former Libyan prime minister and defector from Qaddafi’s regime, and dissatisfaction among Libyan rebels in 2011 with the amount of tactical and air support they were receiving against Qaddafi forces.