Exclusive interview: Gowdy on the Benghazi committee's plans and Hillary Clinton's upcoming testimony

[Valin]

Washington Examiner:

Ryan Lovelace

9/7/15

 

The House Benghazi Committee's investigation will soon take center stage in American politics. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will appear at a hearing held by the committee next month — little more than one year before the presidential election.

 

Since its formation in 2014, the committee has served as something of a thorn in Clinton's side. The committee first uncovered that Clinton had used personal email and at least one private server as secretary of state. Her public responses to questions about her unusual email arrangement have dogged her presidential campaign, as new revelations have forced her to alter earlier statements made about her exchange of classified information and the security of her communications.

 

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, talked to the Washington Examiner about his investigation, his plans for Clinton's hearing, and the changes that he hopes result from his committee's work.

 

The following is an edited transcript of Gowdy's in-depth conversation with the Examiner.

 

Examiner: I wanted to ask you specifically about the potential existence of multiple servers being used by former Secretary Clinton. How do you intend to locate any other devices or servers where emails may have been transferred or stored? Would you subpoena the FBI?

 

Gowdy: No. The committee on Benghazi only has subpoena power for people and documents. We don't have subpoena power for items. It would be inappropriate — to put it mildly — for a legislative branch entity to issue a subpoena to an executive branch investigatory entity. So I'm going to let the FBI do what it is that they are trained and experts at doing. My committee does not and never has had the power to subpoena a server. We do have the power to ask that she turn it over to a third party, which we have consistently done since March. There would necessarily be things on the server no matter how many servers may exist that would be beyond the scope of our committee. And my interest is in making sure the public record is complete as it relates to Libya and Benghazi, but there are lots of folks who have equities in her public record far beyond us. So it would need to be an entity that had more jurisdiction than our committee.

 

(Snip)