[Daily Caller] Republicans in the House issued subpoenas to the technology companies that managed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private emails while she served as secretary of state.The Science, Space and Technology Committee is ordering the CEO of Datto, Inc. Austin McChord to appear before Congress and testify about the business’ handling of Clinton’s emails and other relevant details pertaining to her server.
Committee chairman and Texas Rep. Lamar Smith said in a press release that a testimony was imperative because "companies providing services to Secretary Hillary Clinton’s private email account and server are not above the law."
In a letter to McChord, co-authors Smith and Sen. Ron Johnson, contended "that a product offered by Datto, Inc.‐the Datto SIRIS S2000‐was purchased in 2013 for Secretary Clinton to provide on-site, immediate recovery of backup data in the event that the primary server failed."
Certain employees who were specifically hired to oversee emails could have had access to highly confidential and sensitive material, despite access being implicitly illegal. The committee also wants to decipher if Clinton’s email practices were in compliance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cybersecurity standards.
Smith says that because companies like Datto "have failed to comply with our committee’s request for documents and interviews," a legally-binding directive was in order.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the committee’s ranking Democrat, expressed her severe disapproval over the issuance of the subpoena.
"I am outraged that the chairman is recklessly abusing the committee’s investigatory powers to brazenly do the bidding of the Trump campaign," Eddie Johnson said, according to the Washington Examiner. "I am certain that the Science Committee will not uncover any ’smoking gun’ after this issue has already been thoroughly investigated by the Benghazi Committee at a cost of $7 million in taxpayers dollars as well as by the FBI."
Two other companies, Platte River Networks and SECNAP Network Security Corp., were also issued subpoenas after failing to voluntarily answer questions relating to Clinton’s use of her private email server, according to The New York Times.