The State Department released 296 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email account today, perhaps hoping that the holiday weekend would wipe them from everyone’s memory as quickly as the emails were wiped from her server. A third of the emails in the news dump, which many hope will provide a clearer picture of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State, have already been released; the rest of the 55,000 pages’ worth of email being sorted by the State Department will be released on a “rolling basis,” as required by federal courts. The batch of emails totals nearly 900 pages.
Because there are many people who would like to read these emails, the website hosting the documents is very slow right now. Many of Hillary Clinton’s contributions to the email threads are limited to “Pls print” or “thx.”
On Tuesday, at an event in Iowa, Clinton said, “I have said repeatedly I want those emails out. Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do.”
Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, who heads the House committee investigating the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attacks, said in a statement after the emails’ release, “To assume a self-selected public record is complete, when no one with a duty or responsibility to the public had the ability to take part in the selection, requires a leap in logic no impartial reviewer should be required to make and strains credibility.” Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, spun the emails in the different direction. “Instead of the selective leaking that has happened so far,” he said, “the American people can now read all of these emails and see for themselves that they contain no evidence to back up … any other wild allegations Republicans have made for years.”
On Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the released emails “do not change in anyway anyone’s understanding” of the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks.
