Rep. Schiff: No Evidence of a Benghazi Stand-Down Order in Hillary’s E-mails

On the Clinton e-mail revelations, Rep. Schiff insisted, ‘This is not something new’

“The fact is that all prior secretaries of state, from Clinton going back, have all maintained personal email accounts. She was the first, I think, to submit those personal emails to the State Department. So let’s not hold this secretary to a different standard than the other secretaries. Colin Powell has already acknowledged that he used his personal emails.

Second, in terms of the Benghazi investigation, we knew as of last summer that the secretary used the private email account. This is not something new. We knew also that she was cooperating; she was giving us everything we asked for. Nothing changed except that the pressure on Republican members of the committee this week became too great for them to resist from the Stop Hillary PAC people and the IRNC people so they issued a subpoena for records we all already have.

Now, the secretary has called for these records to be made public. Why isn’t the chairman doing that? Why aren’t we doing that? The reason is we’ve read them. There is nothing in them. Now, my colleagues say, well how do we know we have them all? And the reality is if this secretary or anyone else emailed a stand-down order as this mythical claim exists out there, there would be several people on the receiving end of that email. There would be people at the Pentagon, there would be people in the field who would have to receive that order. None of that — there is no evidence of that.”

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