Fox's Tantaros Peddles False Discrepancy On Clinton Email Turnover

Tantaros: “There Also Appears To Be A Discrepancy Between The State Department And Clinton's Account Over What Initially Prompted The Agency's Request For Her Records”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Fox's Andrea Tantaros hyped a misleading claim, reported by The Washington Post, that “new information” revealed an inconsistency between the timelines laid out by Hillary Clinton and the State Department regarding how her emails were turned over to the department. Responding a question from the Post, the State Department stated that they first inquired about Clinton's email during the summer of 2014, after her personal email use was brought to the department's attention. But the State Department's response to the paper is not new or different from the department's past statements on the issue, nor is it inconsistent with Clinton's account. From the September 23 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered:

ANDREA TANTAROS:  More potentially bad news for Hillary Clinton. Federal investigators have reportedly recovered some of the work related and personal e-mails that her team deleted from her server. This just as the latest in the investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information during her time as Secretary of State by using a so-called 'home-brew server' she kept in a room at her residence in New York. Meantime, there also appears to be a discrepancy between the State Department and Clinton's account over what initially prompted the agency's request for her records. Clinton has long maintained that her decision to turn over the emails was part of a routine record request. But the State Department claims that it was actually sparked by the revelation Clinton was exclusively using a private email system. So the question, Bill, is which one is it? I mean if you look back, Ms. Clinton has contradicted herself in so many different areas on this server. And the reason she had the server was to avoid, in my estimation, those FOIA laws, those record-keeping laws. So I am just not buying that she was compelled to turn it over for the good of record-keeping. [emphasis added]