If Republicans have their way, a portion of funding for the State Department could be withheld until officials cooperate with an investigation into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
According to The Hill, the House Appropriations Committee's State and Foreign Operations bill for the 2016 fiscal year "withholds 15 percent of State Department's operational funds until requirements related to proper management of Freedom of Information Act and electronic communications are met," Republicans said in a statement.
The measure delivers on a threat by the House GOP earlier this month that they would withhold funding until they obtained documents related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tenure,
The Hill reported.
"The Hillary emails would be wholly contained within the net that they are casting," an Appropriations Committee source told The Hill.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned last month that "there is a chance" that some of the funding for the department could be withheld as leverage to assist the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
"There's a discussion. We haven't come to a conclusion yet," Texas GOP Rep. Kay Granger, chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles funding for the State Department and foreign aid, told The Hill at the time.
Last week, the State Department submitted 1,200 emails to the select committee from one of Clinton's top aides representing a "partial compliance" on a subpoena the committee issued in March, according to The Hill. The documents were in addition to the 55,000 pages Clinton turned over to the State Department from the private server she used during her tenure.
The State Department also filed a proposal to begin releasing
Clinton's emails every 60 days, with the aim of making all of them publicly available by Jan. 15, 2016. A few weeks ago it released nearly 300 emails related to Benghazi.
"The frustration continues," Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the Benghazi panel's seven Republicans, told The Hill. "We continue to try to persuade the State Department to give us information."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.