By Amanda Becker
WASHINGTON, March 15 (Reuters) - Representative John
Boehner, the top Republican in the U.S. House of
Representatives, plans to announce a new investigation this week
into Hillary Clinton's use of email when she led the State
Department, ABC News reported on Sunday.
ABC's "This Week" program said top Republicans had briefed
it about Boehner's plans, but did not give details.
Clinton, expected to launch her campaign soon for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, has faced a storm of
criticism over her email habits. She used a personal email
address instead of a government one, as well as a personal
server, during the period she was secretary of state from 2009
to 2013.
Clinton told a news conference on Tuesday her private email
address was a "convenience" so she would not have to carry two
mobile devices. She sent and received 62,320 emails while at the
State Department and after a review process, 30,490 were
provided to the department at its request, a Clinton spokesman
said last week. The remaining 31,830 were private and personal
records, the spokesman said.
Clinton's use of a personal email address surfaced as
multiple congressional panels investigated the 2012 attack on a
U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, during her State
Department tenure.
Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, the head of a special
House committee examining Benghazi, has said he would like
Clinton to testify about her email practices before Congress by
April.
Gowdy told "Fox News Sunday" that the panel received eight
emails when it first made its request to the State Department
for Clinton's correspondence related to Benghazi in August 2014.
The panel received another 300 emails in February.
"But who gets to decide what's personal and what's public?
And if it's a mixed-use email and lots of emails we get in life
are both personal and some work, I just can't trust her lawyers
to make the determination that the public is getting everything
they're entitled to," Gowdy said.
A Clinton spokesman was not immediately available to
comment.
(Reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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