The State Department has revealed that it did not receive emails sent between former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and a longtime ally, obliterating the Democrat’s public claim that she gave the agency all of her work-related records.
The State Department notified the House Select Committee on Benghazi of the discrepancy on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. The records gap was initially revealed last week when Sidney Blumenthal gave the Committee 60 Libya- and Benghazi-related emails he exchanged with Clinton.
Blumenthal sent Clinton intelligence reports concerning Libya and other nations though he was not a State Department employee. Instead, he worked at the time for the Clinton Foundation and Media Matters, a non-profit group that is allied with the Clintons.
According to the AP, Blumenthal provided nine full emails and portions of six others that Clinton had not given the State Department. They were sent before the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and included reports Blumenthal sent to Clinton concerning developments during and after the Libyan civil war.
The revelation completely undermines a claim Clinton made at a press conference in March that she “provided all…emails that could possibly be work-related” to the State Department.
She said at the time that her team “went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails.” Clinton gave the State Department 55,000 pages of official emails in December. She said that she deleted all personal correspondence she sent on the email account, which was hosted on a private email server.
Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy said that the news raises more questions about Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
“The revelation these messages were not originally produced to the State Department by Clinton is significant and troubling,” Gowdy said in a statement. “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.”
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