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State Department Turns Over 1,600 Newly-Discovered Clinton Documents to Benghazi Committee

Existence of documents was revealed in unrelated lawsuit

Clinton's email
Hillary Clinton / AP
February 26, 2016

The State Department turned over 1,600 pages of previously undisclosed documents related to Hillary Clinton and Libya to the House Benghazi committee on Friday, a month after it revealed the existence of the documents in an unrelated court case.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi announced it received the records on Friday, adding that the State Department has yet to fully comply with document requests the committee made nearly a year ago.

"Today the State Department turned over more than 1,600 pages of new documents related to former Secretary Clinton and Libya," the committee said. "The State [Department] claimed in a January 8th court filing that it only recently discovered these new documents from the Office of the Secretary."

In January, the State Department disclosed in a court filing that it had recently discovered "thousands" of new documents related to Clinton’s tenure and the Benghazi attack. The filing was in response to a lawsuit by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has been seeking records from Clinton’s time at the State Department.

The documents may be released in response to public records requests, but the copies received by the Benghazi committee are not redacted in regard to Libya and Benghazi issues.

The records come from the Office of the Secretary, which would likely include Clinton’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, top aide Huma Abedin, and Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and scheduler.

The Benghazi committee announced last week that it had conducted its 75th interview as part of its investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack, interviewing former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matt Olsen. The committee recently interviewed Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state and a key member of Clinton’s inner circle. Most of the committee’s interviews have been conducted privately.

"While there are still witnesses to talk to and documents to review, these significant breakthroughs are big wins that will help the committee complete the most comprehensive investigation into what happened before, during and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and release a report as soon as possible," committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) said in a statement announcing the panel’s progress last week.