Fox News figures are adopting an impossible standard to launch unprovable allegations against Hillary Clinton, arguing that the absence of an email can insinuate that Clinton either withheld or destroyed evidence. 

Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, claimed on the March 8 edition of CBS' Face The Nation that there are “gaps of months” in Clinton's email documents turned over by the State Department for the committee's investigation. To prove his claim, Gowdy referenced a photo of Clinton on her phone during a trip to Tripoli, Libya, and the absence of any email from that day related to Benghazi. According to Gowdy's logic: “It strains credibility to believe that if you're on your way to Libya to discuss Libyan policy that there's not a single document that's been turned over to Congress.”

Fox News personalities quickly adopted Gowdy's absurd line of attack against Clinton. On his radio show, Sean Hannity asserted that “you can't tell me that it was an accident that 55,000 pages of emails were turned over but not one was about Benghazi.” Fox contributor Andrew Napolitano took the attack further alleging that Clinton's control of her documents means Gowdy “does not know if she gave him everything he subpoenaed.” Bill O'Reilly echoed Gowdy's allegations on the March 9 edition of his show, saying “there's already a gap brought out by Congressman Gowdy” because “the day that she traveled to Libya, there's no emails that came out on that and it's inconceivable that she wouldn't have any.” And during an interview with Gowdy, Megyn Kelly agreed with demands that Clinton turn over her private email server stating that Clinton “chose to create a situation” where questions about her emails would need to be answered.

According to that fallacious reasoning, the absence of evidence proves wrongdoing on Clinton's part. 

The reality is, the State Department turned over Clinton emails related to Benghazi to the Select Committee months ago. In a March 6 letter chastising Gowdy for “the very partisan and political turn” to issue a subpoena to Clinton, Democratic members of the House Select Committee noted that the State Department already turned over 300 Clinton emails related to Benghazi, and those emails confirm the findings of the Accountability Review Board:

These documents include no evidence to suggest that Secretary Clinton ordered the Secretary of Defense to “stand down,” no evidence to suggest that she was personally involved in denying requests for security for Benghazi, and no evidence to suggest that she ordered the destruction of documents. Nothing in these emails contradicts or calls into question the findings of the independent Accountability Review Board.