The House committee investigating Benghazi has given former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two additional weeks to respond to a subpoena for all her communications related to Libya.
Clinton requested an extension until March 27 and Chairman Trey Gowdy granted it. The subpoenas were sent March 4 and were due back March 13.
“Chairman ?Gowdy granted a reasonable extension because for him this is not about politics, it is about getting all relevant documents for the committee,” spokesman Jamal Ware told CNN in an email.
House Republicans are moving forward with two probes into Clinton’s use of personal email to conduct official government business.
Gowdy will take the lead on gathering emails that relate to his investigation into the attack on the U.S. mission in Libya that killed four Americans.
Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz will continue his work to determine whether Clinton violated the law that requires official records to be preserved.
“The select committee will continue to take the lead in the effort to secure official records and emails from Secretary Clinton as it relates to Benghazi investigation and [the House] Oversight and Government Reform Committee will continue to review the executive branch’s compliance with the Federal Records Act,” Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith told CNN in an email Monday evening.
Smith’s comments came after, Chaffetz, Gowdy and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce met with Boehner in the speaker’s office Monday afternoon.
Smith repeated the Republican demand that Clinton “turn over her server to a neutral, third-party arbiter who can make an impartial determination of which emails are official and the property of the federal government.”
Chaffetz told CNN he hasn’t made a decision yet on whether he’ll subpoena Clinton’s email server. Last week, his spokeswoman told CNN the chairman plans to ask the State Department for Clinton’s emails, and could subpoena them if necessary.
Clinton said last week that she will not turn over the server that housed her personal email. And she defended doing government business on a personal email account, saying it was more convenient.
Clinton, who did not use a State Department email, said she has turned over 55,000 pages of work-related email to the State Department for review and has asked that they be made public.
The top Democrat on the oversight committee, Elijah Cummings, called the investigations “overkill.”
“I think it’s unprecedented,” he said.