Democrats Say Benghazi Subpoena Politicizes Email Probe

Democrats on Friday accused Republicans running the special Benghazi investigation of turning former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email troubles into a political circus, saying there was no need to issue an official subpoena for them.

In a letter to Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the panel’s Democrats called the subpoena “ill-considered” and said Mrs. Clinton has tried to cooperate with the investigation by turning emails over to the State Department, which has produced some of them to the committee.

Mrs. Clinton used her own private email server during her time as secretary of state and is now facing scrutiny over that move, which analysts said could violate open-records laws if she didn’t scrupulously forward all of those messages to an official account for storage.

Earlier this week, Mr. Gowdy issued subpoenas to Mrs. Clinton demanding her communications regarding Libya and issued letters informing Internet companies they now have an obligation to preserve emails because they are under subpoena.

Democrats said Mrs. Clinton has “fully cooperated with every aspect of the committee’s investigation” before, and said they expected her cooperation to continue, so there was no need to issue the subpoena. And the Democrats, led by ranking committee member Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, said Mr. Gowdy has known Mrs. Clinton used a private email system for months, but only fired off the subpoena after The New York Times this week reported the fact.

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