Paul Combetta (Credit: CSpan)
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, writes a letter to Platte River Networks (PRN), the computer company that managed Clinton’s private server since June 2013. Chaffetz warns that one PRN employee, Paul Combetta, could face federal charges for deleting and wiping Clinton’s emails from her server in March 2015. That’s because the House Benghazi Committee had issued a formal order to preserve such records earlier in the month, and Combetta confessed in a later FBI interview that he knew about the order before he made the deletions.
In the letter, Chaffetz says a recent FBI report about the deletions “raises questions to whether [Combetta] violated federal statutes that prohibit destruction of evidence and obstruction of a Congressional investigation.”
Additionally, Combetta took part in conference calls with Clinton’s lawyers just days before and after the deletions, but the FBI was unable to determine what was said in those communications, possibly due to an assertion of attorney-client privilege. In the letter, Chaffetz wants an explanation from PRN how Combetta could refuse to talk to the FBI about the conference calls if the only lawyers involved were Clinton’s. (Salon, 9/6/2016)