State Dept. Says Hillary Didn't Turn Over 15 Emails

The State Department is still poring over 55,000 pages of Hillary Clinton emails, but officials made an important announcement yesterday: She didn't turn over at least 15 work-related emails as requested, the New York Times reports. How the discovery was made: The House committee looking into the Benghazi debacle subpoenaed correspondence from longtime Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal, and the State Department cross-referenced the emails he handed over and the ones Clinton did. It found nine emails Blumenthal had were completely missing from her files, as well as parts of six others. Rep. Trey Gowdy, chair of the Benghazi committee, calls the findings "significant" and "troubling" and says that Blumenthal was passing along "unvetted, uncorroborated, unsubstantiated intelligence to our top diplomat" from a source who reportedly had a financial interest in Libya, reports Fox News.

But Clinton aides say she handed over all Blumenthal emails, plus a dozen more that he didn't turn in—and that there's no proof the 15 messages in question were actually sent in the form of an email, as Blumenthal compiled the records he handed over into a Microsoft Word document, the AP reports. Officials say that while some are Libya-related, the Blumenthal messages to Clinton don't directly deal with the 2012 Benghazi attacks: Instead, they discuss topics such as media reports about the death of one of Moammar Gadhafi's sons and the inner workings of Libyan rebels. Gowdy isn’t convinced the messages are moot, however. "This has implications far beyond Libya, Benghazi, and our committee's work," he said in a statement, per CNN. "This conclusively shows her email arrangement with herself, which was then vetted by her own lawyers, has resulted in an incomplete public record." (More Hillary Clinton stories.)