The House Committee investigating the fatal attacks in Beghazi, Libya has formally asked Hillary Clinton to appear before lawmakers for a private interview to answer questions about the use of a private email account while she was at the State Department.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R--S.C., who serves as chairman, sent a letter to the Clinton Tuesday asking that she sit for a “transcribed interview regarding her use of private email and a personal server for official State Department business.”
Hillary Clinton, 67, is the presumed front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, though she continues to be dogged by ethical questions about her family foundation’s acceptance of foreign donations as well as her use of a private email account to conduct government business while she was secretary from 2009 to 2013.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the committee, blasted Gowdy’s request as a political stunt.
"Secretary Clinton agreed to testify months ago – in public and under oath –so the Select Committee’s claim that it has no choice but to subject her to a private staff interview is inaccurate," Cummings said in a statement.
Cummings added that "rather than drag out this political charade into 2016 and selectively leak portions of a closed-door interview, the Committee should schedule a public hearing, make her records public, and re-focus its efforts on the attacks in Benghazi."
On Friday, Clinton's attorney told the committee that she permanently deleted all emails from the private server she used to conduct official business, apparently after she was first asked by the State Department to turn them over.
Gowdy had previously called on Clinton to allow an independent arbiter to evaluate all emails on her server to determine which qualified as official business. Clinton also said she would not allow an independent third party to analyze the server. It was not immediately clear whether the emails still could be recovered from the server through cyberforensic procedures.
Clinton said at a recent news conference that it would have been smarter to have State Department business through a government server.
She said her attorneys had turned over 30,490 emails to the State Department in response to a request from the agency, but that she deleted more than 32,000 emails that she considered personal.
Gowdy is heading the latest House inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Killed in the violence were the U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
A spokesman for Clinton did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.