WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton responded to intense scrutiny over her email practices on Wednesday, saying she has asked the State Department to make available her private email during her tenure as secretary of state.
"I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible," Clinton wrote in a tweet posted late Wednesday evening.
A New York Times report published Monday evening set off a firestorm of criticism, and suggested Clinton violated State Department regulations by using a personal email account for government business, potentially shielding her correspondence from public inquiries like Freedom of Information Act requests. Her email account, clintonemail.com, was hosted by a server located at her home, and reportedly "became a symbol of status within the family’s inner circle."
Clinton's advisers submitted some 50,000 pages of emails to the State Department two months ago at the government's request, but critics maintained that using private email allowed Clinton to pick and choose which documents to submit with no way to verify the process. A House panel investigating the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya, on Wednesday issued a subpoena for any and all of Clinton's private emails related to the attack.
The controversy threatens to derail Clinton's likely presidential campaign launch, reportedly planned for this month or next. Her way of addressing growing controversy -- in a tweet nearly 48 hours after it was first reported -- is likely to add to concerns over whether she is prepared to run a presidential campaign in today's hyper-media atmosphere.
UPDATE: March 5, 8:45 a.m. -- The State Department said Thursday it would "take some time" to complete a review of the emails provided by Clinton.
"The State Department will review for public release the emails provided by Secretary Clinton to the Department, using a normal process that guides such releases. We will undertake this review as quickly as possible; given the sheer volume of the document set, this review will take some time to complete," department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a statement.
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