Gowdy says it's 'an open constitutional question' as to whether the House can seize the server. Gowdy to Hillary: Turn over your personal email server

Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Benghazi select committee, expanded Wednesday morning upon his calls for Hillary Clinton to turn over her email server.

The South Carolina Republican said that while his committee cannot seize personal property, it’s “an open constitutional question” whether the House of Representatives may do so, repeating his call for an independent arbiter as well.


“Well, our committee doesn’t have the power under our rules; we don’t have the power to seize personal property like that. The House as a whole, that’s frankly an open constitutional question, as to whether or not the House as a whole has that legal authority. But, frankly, we shouldn’t have to compel it,” Gowdy said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

He added: “I think it’s eminently reasonable to ask someone to turn the server over to an independent, neutral third-party. Not to the House of Representatives.”

“Turn it over to a retired judge, an archivist, an inspector general, so that we can have some assurance that the ‘we’ that separated the public from the private did a good job,” said Gowdy, a former district attorney.

Gowdy said that while his committee is interested only in matters related to Libya and Benghazi, other congressional committees might want to see other matters related to the public record.

“One thing that’s clear is that we don’t get to grade our own papers in life,” he said, noting Clinton’s announcement Tuesday, in which she said “we went through a thorough process” to identify her work-related emails.

Gowdy said Tuesday that he wants the former secretary of state to testify twice before his panel, once on the emails and again on the Benghazi attack itself, adding that he would like to have “the document part” done by April but that his committee doesn’t necessarily have to discuss the server with her.

During Tuesday’s news conference, Clinton said she wouldn’t turn over about 30,000 emails that she characterized as “personal.”

She also said she wouldn’t allow an independent commission to examine the emails on her personal server since they contained non-work-related correspondence between her and former President Bill Clinton.