Mitch Perry
A majority of voters think Republican U.S. Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi probe is more about damaging Hillary Clinton than trying to uncover why Ambassador Chris Stevens was slain in Libya, a national survey commissioned by Hillary Clinton supporters contends.
It also contends that a majority of voters think Jeb Bush should turn over his e-mail server from his time as Florida governor, and that Bush is playing politics by attacking Clinton on that issue even though his own e-mail was set up in a similar way.
Correct The Record is the rapid-response group led by David Brock, former Clinton nemesis and ringleader of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” who has become her supporter in recent years. It has commissioned polling group Public Policy Polling (also noted to have Democratic leanings) for the survey asking the public about the scandal involving Clinton’s email server. It’s been a daily news story and may be why the former secretary of state now trails Democratic opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders in the most recent Iowa and New Hampshire polling.
“When it comes to this email story, Republicans are either hypocrites or playing politics or both: We’ve been saying this all along and this poll shows scientifically that voters agree,” said Adrienne Watson, communications director of Correct The Record. “Voters believe its basic fairness for Trey Gowdy and Jeb Bush to be held to the same standard as former Secretary Clinton. They should either release their own emails, and in Bush’s case his server, or admit this is about politics and move on.”
The PPP survey turns the tables on Gowdy, who is leading the House investigation into the events of September 11,2012, where Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were killed at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton is scheduled to testify before his committee next month.
Among the survey findings is that 54 percent of voters nationally think the primary motivation of Gowdy’s investigation is politics and hurting Clinton, compared with 40 percent who think it’s about getting to the bottom of the Benghazi U.S. Embassy raid.
Sixty-two percent of voters think Gowdy should release his emails related to the investigation, versus 27 percent who don’t think he should. That includes the majorities of Democrats (70/17), Republicans (58/35), and independents (53/33) all in agreement on the matter.
PPP says the public’s demand for Gowdy to release his e-mails fits well into a broader finding that only 20 percent of voters think members of Congress should be allowed to keep their work-related e-mails secret, compared with 73 percent who don’t think they should be allowed to do that. Republicans (80/14) are particularly adamant that members of Congress should have to release their work-related e-mails, with independents (77/14) and Democrats (65/29) in broad agreement as well.
The poll also says that 54 percent of voters think Bush should follow Clinton’s lead and turn over his email server from when he was governor versus 40 percent who don’t think he should do that.
Bush owns the server that runs [email protected], the personal email account he used as governor to conduct official, political and personal business.
In Reno last month, Bush criticized Clinton for using email with a personal server.
“And then you have Hillary Clinton, who was the secretary of state dealing with confidential information, with classified information, thinking it was OK to use a private server? Thinking that her server would be safer than the State Department’s firewalls?” he said. “We need a president that recognizes there are threats in the 21st century that are dramatically different than of 30 years ago.”
Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that the company that managed Clinton’s private e-mail server said it has “no knowledge of the server being wiped,” which they report is the strongest indication to date that tens of thousands of e-mails that Clinton has said were deleted could be recovered.
Public Policy Polling surveyed 586 registered voters nationally on Sept. 8 and 9 on behalf of Correct the Record. The survey’s margin of error is +4.1 percent.
