US Lawmaker to Launch Investigation of Hillary Clinton Emails

The top Republican in the US House of Representatives is expected to announce an investigation this week into Hillary Clinton's use of email when she led the State Department, ABC News reported on Sunday.

ABC's "This Week" said that top Republicans briefed the program about Speaker John Boehner's plan to investigate Clinton's use of her personal email address when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

However, the network did not state whether the probe would be separate from an ongoing House investigation and additional actions being considered by an oversight committee.

Clinton's failure to use a government email address has sparked a storm of criticism even as she lays the groundwork for an expected 2016 presidential bid. At a news conference last on Tuesday, she said her private email address was a "convenience" so she would not have to carry two mobile devices.

Also on Tuesday, Clinton's office released a detailed document about her email use and the steps she had taken to provide relevant official emails to the State Department.

Clinton sent and received 62,320 emails while at the State Department, and after a review process, 30,490 official emails were provided to the department and 31,830 were withheld as private and personal records, the document said.

Clinton's attorneys used key search terms, such as official government account addresses and countries relevant to ongoing congressional probes, to identify official emails, according to the document.

This search was conducted in addition to reading every single email, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill confirmed on Sunday.

Clinton's use of a personal email address first surfaced as congressional panels investigated the 2012 attack on a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya.

Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, the head of a House committee examining Benghazi, has said he would like Clinton to testify before Congress by April, when she is expected to formally launch her presidential campaign.

Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz, who chairs an oversight committee on government reform, said last week that his panel would cooperate with Gowdy's and "continue looking into this matter."

Boehner's office declined to comment on the ABC News report. A Gowdy representative said that its Benghazi probe would continue.

Gowdy told "Fox News Sunday" that there are "huge gaps" in the Clinton email record provided to the committee.

"I just can't trust her lawyers to make the determination that the public is getting everything they're entitled to," Gowdy said.