Congress set up a face-to-face showdown with Hillary Clinton and opened the next chapter in the controversy over her “unprecedented” use of a private email account on Tuesday, as Republican leaders pressed to investigate whether the former secretary of state withheld correspondence relevant to the US consulate attack in Benghazi.  The House select committee on Benghazi formally requested an interview with Clinton just days after a Clinton lawyer admitted the family’s private email server had been wiped clean – and hours after revelations emerged that Clinton had used an iPad to conduct State Department business on it, not just two mobile phones out of “convenience”.  Trey Gowdy, the chair of the committee which has long been an irritant to Clinton on the 2012 Benghazi attack, issued a formal request on Tuesday for a private transcribed interview with the former secretary of state before 1 May.  Related: Hillary Clinton used iPad to send emails despite claims she used only one device  In a statement, Gowdy said such an interview “would best protect Secretary Clinton’s privacy, the security of the information queried, and the public’s interest in ensuring this Committee has all information needed to accomplish the task set before it”.  Gowdy called for “a reasonable assurance all documents in the Secretary’s care, custody and control related to what happened before, during, and after the attacks in Benghazi have been shared with the Committee”, after which time he said he would arrange for Clinton to testify in public.  “We continue to believe Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement with herself is highly unusual, if not unprecedented,” Gowdy said. “While she has cited a variety of justifications for this arrangement, many questions and details about the arrangement remain unanswered.”  A spokesman for Clinton, Nick Merrill, told the Guardian: “Secretary Clinton already told the committee months ago that she was ready to appear at a public hearing. It is by their choice that hasn’t happened. To be clear, she remains ready to appear at a hearing open to the American public.”  Clinton has previously said – on social media and in a press conference – that she wants the 30,000 emails that she did turn over to the State Department and were not deleted from her server to be publicly available. The State Department has said the release of these emails could take “several months”.  Related: Hillary Clinton's 'confusing situation' reveals more chinks in the armour  In a letter sent to Gowdy on Friday, Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, said “there are no hdr22@clintonemail.com emails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized”.  Gowdy had expressed alarm that Clinton “summarily decided to delete all emails from her server ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest”, but the renewed call for a direct interview suggested a new chapter in the ongoing investigation into the US response to the 2012 terrorist attack and whether Clinton tried to conceal relevant evidence.  The latest setback for Clinton, who is trying to put the email controversy behind her ahead of a formal launch to her presidential campaign, expected next month, was amplified by the revelation earlier on Tuesday that the former secretary of state had been using her iPad to send emails.  In a March press conference at the United Nations defending her use of the private email server, Clinton claimed that she consolidated her email from the two phones into one private account and avoided using a government account “for convenience”.  “When I got to work as secretary of state I opted, for convenience, to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the state department,” she said, “because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and my personal emails instead of two.”  The use of the iPad was revealed in an email uncovered by a request under the Freedom of Information Act from the Associated Press.  In the email, sent in September 2011, Clinton asked longtime aide Huma Abedin to “pls let me know if you got a reply from my ipad. I’m not sure replies go thru”.  The newly uncovered exchange took place after the then secretary of state mistakenly responded with questions about decorations to an email from Abedin about a drone strike in Pakistan.  A poll released on Tuesday by Quinnipiac University showed that Clinton’s favorability has slipped somewhat since the email scandal first emerged. According the poll, conducted in key battleground states, Clinton’s approval rating had decreased by seven percentage points in Florida over the past month, but only by three points in Ohio.  Clinton also fared worse in general election matchups against potential Republican candidates than before the use of her private email server was reported earlier this month.
Leading Republican on House select committee demands formal interview to clarify handling of private email server after admission it was wiped clean