WASHINGTON — A House committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya, attacks issued subpoenas Wednesday for the e-mails of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who used a private account exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state.
The subpoenas from the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi demanded additional material from Clinton and others related to Libya, said spokesman Jamal D. Ware. The panel also instructed technology companies it did not identify to preserve any relevant documents in their possession.
The development on Capitol Hill came the same day The Associated Press reported the existence of a personal e-mail server traced to the Chappaqua, N.Y., home of Clinton. Her own e-mail server would have given Clinton — who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign — significant control over limiting access to her message archives.
The practice also would complicate the State Department’s legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official e-mails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be in the position of accepting Clinton’s assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control.
Late Wednesday, a message was sent on Clinton’s Twitter account @HillaryClinton: “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
Congress said it learned last summer about Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account to conduct official State Department business during its investigation of the Benghazi attacks on a U.S. mission in which four Americans died.
“It doesn’t matter if the server was in Foggy Bottom, Chappaqua or Bora Bora,” said House Speaker John Boehner. “The Benghazi Select Committee needs to see all of these e-mails because the American people deserve all of the facts.”
The chairman of the Benghazi committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said, “I want the documents. Sooner rather than later.”
Democrats called it a fishing expedition.
“Everything I’ve seen so far has led me to believe that this is an effort to go after Hillary Clinton, period,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee.
The questions about Clinton’s e-mail practices left the Obama administration in an awkward position. At one point, the State Department directed reporters to contact Clinton, who has not publicly commented about her e-mails. The White House said it was her responsibility to make sure any e-mails about official business weren’t deleted from her private server.
AP said it was considering legal action under the Freedom of Information Act against the State Department for failing to turn over some e-mails covering Clinton’s tenure as the nation’s top diplomat after waiting more than one year. The department has never suggested that it doesn’t possess all Clinton’s e-mails.
It was not immediately clear exactly where Clinton’s computer server was run, but a business record for the Internet connection it used was registered under the home address for her residence as early as August 2010. The customer was listed as Eric Hoteham.
An aide to then-first lady Clinton was identified in a 2002 congressional report as Eric Hothem, whose name is spelled differently than in the Internet records.
Hothem, a financial adviser in Washington, was not available to take an AP reporter’s phone call at his office. He was a special assistant to Clinton as far back as 1997 and considered one of the family’s information technology experts.
In most cases, individuals who operate their own e-mail servers are technical experts or users so concerned about issues of privacy and surveillance they take matters into their own hands.
Clinton — who e-mailed so frequently using her BlackBerry as secretary of state that it became an Internet meme — is sensitive about disclosures of personal files based on her experiences in confronting congressional investigations and civil lawsuits during her husband’s election and presidency and her own roles as first lady, senator, presidential candidate and Cabinet official.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Clinton as a Cabinet secretary never used a government e-mail account on the agency’s separate network for sharing classified information, which Clinton would have been prohibited from forwarding to her private e-mail account.
“She had other ways of communicating through classified e-mail through her assistants or her staff, with people, when she needed to use a classified setting,” Harf said.
Most Internet users rely on professional outside companies, such as Google or their own employers, for the behind-the-scenes complexities of managing their e-mail communications.
Government employees generally use servers run by federal agencies where they work. Clinton’s e-mail practices appear to be far more sophisticated than some politicians, including Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, who were found to have been conducting official business using free e-mail services operated by Microsoft and Yahoo.
Clinton has not described her reasons for using a private e-mail account — hdr22@clintonemail.com.
Operating her own server would have afforded Clinton additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any e-mails.
