A software company that sells a brute-force data erasure program is boasting that its technology gave Hillary Clinton the power to 'wipe' her private homebrew email server before it fell into the hands of the FBI. Application developer Andrew Ziem wrote in a Thursday night press release that his BleachBit software prevented the FBI from accessing emails that Clinton deleted.
'Last year when Clinton was asked about wiping her email server, she joked, "Like with a cloth or something?" It turns out now that BleachBit was that cloth.'
When Windows, Mac OS, Linux or other operating systems 'delete' files, their entries in a hard drive's directory are erased but the core data typically remains in place.
BleachBit is one of many software packages that go further, 'zeroing out' the data itself so it can't be pieced back together again by hackers or forensic examiners.
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi, told a Fox News Channel audience on Thursday that Clinton's use of BleachBit had erased her deleted emails so thoroughly that 'even God can't read them.'
'She and her lawyers had those emails deleted,' Gowdy said. 'And they didn't just push the delete button ... They were using something called BleachBit.'
Clinton told reporters last year in a rare press conference that the more than 33,000 emails she ordered deleted concerned personal, non-work-related subjects like yoga sessions and the planning of her daughter Chelsea's wedding.
Gowdy suspected that Clinton considered all her emails related to the controversial Clinton Foundation to be personal messages, and got rid of them instead of handing them over to the State Department.
'You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails or for bridemaids emails,' Gowdy charged. 'When you're using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see.'
Clinton has avoided for months answering questions about classified material in emails that the State Department recovered from her.
She has not held a formal press conference in the last 265 days.
After the Fox News segment aired, Ziem wrote in a BleachBit user forum, his website's traffic spiked.
'I do not know who the visitors are, but web site traffic was sharply up this morning (when it aired live on TV),' he wrote.
'It slowed down, and now it is picking back up again.'
Ziem wrote in his press release that 'BleachBit has not been served a warrant or subpoena in relation to the investigation' into Clinton's emails.
'The cleaning process is not reversible,' he cautioned.
