Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton's attorney has confirmed to the U.S. House of Representatives committee on Benghazi that the former Secretary of State indeed wiped her email server clean. She chose "not to keep" personal messages, and set a 60-day limit on the server's data.
Remaining records include about 30,500 messages from her tenure as Secretary of State. That is approximately 50 percent of what the server stored during that period.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) is head of the House committee that is investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks on two U.S. diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya. He argued on Friday that Clinton had wiped "clean" the private server from her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, according to Politico.
Gowdy claimed that Clinton permanently erased the server after the Department of State requested her to return her public record to it. At the time, Clinton was under a subpoena for all documents pertaining to the 2012 attacks.
Meanwhile, David Kendall, an attorney for Clinton, argued that Clinton had fulfilled the panel's request. She had submitted 900 pages of her emails to comply with the committee panel.
Both Republicans and Democrats are both spinning the latest news to their benefit.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) argues that the committee's request for additional emails is "political charade." He supports Clinton making the remaining messages public to prove that her record is totally clean, according to Engadget.
Nevertheless, Rep. Gowdy (R-SC) disagrees. He argues that Clinton is trying to prevent anyone from "checking behind" her analysis.
Regardless of which side is right, it is difficult to determine what the truth is. The House committee will have to trust that Clinton regularly submitted all political-related emails before the server automatically deleted them.
Still, the Bengahzi panel has said that it will require Clinton to testify two or more times. Firstly will be privately about her use of email as Secretary of State, and secondly will be publically about the Obama administration's official reaction to the Benghazi attacks.
