House Committee Subpoenas Hillary Clinton's Emails

A few days after it was reported that Hillary Clinton used only a personal email account during her time as Secretary of State, a House committee subpoenaed Clinton's emails in the Benghazi probe, the Associated Press reports. The committee is investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that left four people dead, including the U.S. ambassador. Because Clinton solely used a personal — not a government — email account on her own email server, her correspondence was not archived for public record.

The debacle over the emails have, like usual, split reactions among party lines. Republicans state all the emails need to be available because, as House Speaker John Boehner said, "the American people deserve all of the facts," while Democrats believe it's a mission to "go after Hillary Clinton, period," Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is on the Benghazi Select Committee, told the Associated Press.

What exactly is the committee hoping it will learn from the emails? Congressional aides to the Republican-led committee spoke anonymously to the AP, stating only that the subpoenas are meant to "demand additional material" from Clinton. Clinton aides reviewed her emails and passed on 55,000 pages of correspondence, but because the email account was on a private server, Clinton would have significant control over what was accessible.

Federal requirements state that emails from a federal official must be preserved and published in the Federal Register, under the Federal Records Act. But it's worth noting that Clinton isn't the only politician to use a personal email account for government business-related correspondence. She's not even the only Secretary of State to have ever done so — The Huffington Post reported that Colin Powell also used personal email for business while serving as Secretary of State because he was "not aware of any restrictions," an aide said. And in 2007, advisers to President George W. Bush used their Republican National Committee email addresses for government work when they were only meant to use those emails for campaign-related business.

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