By Katie Bo Williams - 10/03/16 12:21 PM EDT
Donald Trump ripped the Department of Justice for not investigating Hillary Clinton, arguing he'd appoint a new attorney general to restore its integrity.
“My attorney general will restore the integrity of the DOJ which has been severely questioned," the GOP presidential nominee said during an off-script moment of a speech at a Retired American Warriors PAC event in Herndon, Va.
The remarks come amid ongoing Republican outrage that Clinton, the Democratic nominee, was not charged in connection with her use of a private server during her tenure as secretary of State.
Fallout from the FBI’s investigation and subsequent decision not to recommend charges has continued as new revelations have emerged that the IT firm that managed the server used a software known as “BleachBit” to permanently erase an old email archive.
The archive was deleted despite an outstanding congressional subpoena for documents related to the 2012 attack on the Benghazi outpost in Libya.
“Frankly, nobody has ever seen anything like what’s happening today, when you have somebody getting a subpoena from the U.S. Congress to have your emails and all other information sent, and after, not before, after getting the subpoena, 33,000 emails are deleted and acid washed and nobody even knows what that means, acid washed, it’s a very expensive thing to do, most people don’t even know what it means,” Trump said.
The destroyed archive was separate from the 30,000 documents Clinton’s legal team deemed “personal” and deleted in 2014, prior to turning over the remainder to the State Department.
The FBI managed to reconstruct approximately 15,000 emails that were not turned over to State, almost all of which State has since affirmed were either personal emails or were duplicates of those Clinton turned over in 2014.
Clinton critics have seized on the deleted archive — revealed in documents released by the FBI at the close of the investigation — as evidence that the former first lady destroyed evidence.
“I can’t think of anything in terms of what we’re talking about much more serious than that … hard to believe they can get away with this kind of thing,” Trump said Monday.
The real estate mogul also said reform at Justice was as necessary now as "after Watergate."
During that investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate building, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, both resigned, refusing President Nixon's order that they fire the special prosecutor in charge of investigating Watergate.
Nixon then named Solicitor General Robert Bork his attorney general, and Bork fired the prosecutor, Archibald Cox — infuriating Congress.
Nixon eventually resigned from office after evidence showed his campaign was involved in the break-in.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/298982-trump-calls-for-reform-of-justice-department
