Trey Gowdy posts one of ‘several subpoenas’ as war of words over private server returns and Clinton camp fires back to say ‘inaccuracy’ claim is inaccurate

Hillary Clinton has been accused of lying about receiving a subpoena from the House select committee on Benghazi by the committee’s chair, in a heated back-and-forth that has renewed tensions over the presidential frontrunner’s use of private email.

In a statement on Wednesday, Republican congressman Trey Gowdy accused the former secretary of state of making an “inaccurate claim” during an interview on Tuesday. Responding to a question about the controversy surrounding her email server while at the US state department, Clinton had told CNN: “I’ve never had a subpoena.”

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But Gowdy said: “The committee has issued several subpoenas, but I have not sought to make them public. I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice in order to correct the inaccuracy.”

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told the Guardian that Gowdy’s accusation itself was inaccurate, insisting that the congressman had not issued a subpoena until March.

“She was asked about her decision to not to retain her personal emails after providing all those that were work-related, and the suggestion was made that a subpoena was pending at that time. That was not accurate,” Merrill wrote in an email.

Gowdy also posted a copy of the subpoena on the Benghazi committee’s website.

According to Gowdy, “the committee immediately subpoenaed Clinton personally after learning the full extent of her unusual email arrangement with herself, and would have done so earlier if the State Department or Clinton had been forthcoming that State did not maintain custody of her records and only Secretary Clinton herself had her records when Congress first requested them.”

Although originally set up by Congress to investigate the response to the 11 September 2012 attack on the US consulate at Benghazi, the committee’s remit has since expanded to probe the controversy around Clinton’s use of a personal email address while serving as secretary of state.

In her CNN interview, Clinton insisted that the issue was “being blown up with no basis in law or in fact” that she went “above and beyond” her legal obligations in cooperating with the committee.

Merrill, the Clinton spokesman, pushed that line further on Wednesday: “The subpoena asked for documents pertaining to Libya and the attacks on our facility in Benghazi,” he told the Guardian. He said Clinton had already handed over those documents, “along with tens of thousands of others”.