The long, complicated story of Hillary Clinton's Benghazi subpoena

So Clinton had destroyed everything beyond the paper copies of emails she chose to turn over to State. Which raises the question: Did she destroy material under subpoena?

If Clinton destroyed the emails before January 2015, they would have been still covered by the Oversight Committee’s original Sept. 20, 2012, request for documents. That request and others, as well as the Aug. 1, 2013, subpoena, were in effect through the end of 2014, but expired in January 2015 as the 113th Congress came to an end. As far as the subpoena is concerned, there is still an argument about whether it covered just the materials already available in the reading room or a broader range of material. (Whatever the case, both the request and the subpoena demanded that documents originally produced in electronic form — including emails — should be turned over to the committee in electronic form. Clinton decided on her own to print them out and destroy the data-rich electronic versions.)

Then there is the question of whether Clinton destroyed the emails after the Benghazi committee specifically asked for them on Nov. 18, 2014. That’s not clear, although it seems likely she destroyed them before Gowdy formally subpoenaed them on March 4 of this year.

Whatever the case, there’s no doubt Clinton destroyed evidence that was actively sought by congressional committees. And now she’s telling investigators what they can do with their subpoenas.