WASHINGTON — House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday mocked a Republican investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices, calling it part of an ongoing attempt to investigate Clinton, “whether it’s her emails or it’s her hair.”
Pelosi accused House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans of hypocrisy in calling for Clinton to turn over her email server to a neutral third party, since no similar demands were made of other secretaries of state, including Republican Colin Powell.
The GOP-led inquiry “isn’t really about emails,” Pelosi said, but instead is a partisan investigation by a select committee that has spent millions of dollars and produced “nothing.”
Pelosi was referring to an inquiry by a special committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, which occurred while Clinton was serving as secretary of state. The panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., has issued a subpoena for Clinton’s emails and other documents related to Benghazi attacks. He says he wants Clinton, a likely presidential candidate, to testify before his panel at least twice.
Clinton has said she relied on personal emails as the nation’s top diplomat. She says the server “will remain private.”
Pelosi told reporters Thursday that it’s a mistake for the Benghazi panel or any other committee “to continue a political investigation of Hillary Clinton. And that’s what they seem to do. It seems to me a big waste of taxpayer money.”
In order to be fair to Clinton, the GOP should look at email practices of former secretaries of states dating back to 2000, Pelosi said.
“Even if you just said in this century where technology has moved forward … I would say let’s see what other secretaries of state (have done), what their practices” were, Pelosi said. “Maybe that would be an interesting contrast.”
Although email practices varied among her predecessors, Clinton is the only secretary of state known to have conducted all official unclassified government business on a private email address. Powell has said he used both a government and a private email account when he served as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.
On Thursday, Boehner again urged Clinton to turn over her server for an independent review.
“We need the secretary to do the right thing here, so that we can get to the facts about what happened before, during and after an attack on our people,” Boehner said.
MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press
