Congress, Clinton Set To Spar Over E-mails

By MICHAEL FALCONE

NOTABLES

  • BOEHNER EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE NEW HOUSE INVESTIGATION INTO CLINTON E-MAILS: House Speaker John Boehner is expected to announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as Secretary of State, including her admission that more than 31,000 emails were destroyed because she determined them to be personal, top House Republicans told ABC News, ABC's JONATHAN KARL reports. http://abcn.ws/1MCwQOT The latest from KARL on "Good Morning America" today: http://abcn.ws/1xrzZIo
  • CARVILLE - E-MAIL CONTROVERSY 'AMOUNTS TO NOTHING': Democratic strategist and Clinton ally James Carville, speaking on "This Week," said he suspected the former First Lady "didn't want [Rep.] Louis Gohmert rifling through her e-mails," and added the controversy "amounts to nothing but a bunch of people flapping their jaws about nothing." More from the "This Week" roundtable on the firestorm over the former secretary of state's private email account: http://abcn.ws/1xpAanB
  • CLINTON'S DELETED EMAILS WERE INDIVIDUALLY REVIEWED AFTER ALL: How exactly did Hillary Clinton's team decide which of her emails should be saved and which ones should be deleted? Three days after Time Magazine initially reported on Team Clinton's review process to determine which of her emails were work-related and which were personal, the former secretary of state's people said yesterday the examination did include opening and reading each email, according to ABC's SHUSHANNAH WALSHE and LIZ KREUTZ. http://abcn.ws/1EozVON
  • WORD FROM CLINTON WORLD: Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill released a statement on Sunday saying that "in wanting the public to understand how robust of a search was conducted, the fact sheet laid out several examples of the methods used by the reviewers to double and triple check they were capturing everything." The "fact sheet" refers to a question-and-answer document given out after the news conference last week. The big headline from Clinton's news conference Tuesday was that, although she claims to have turned over all work-related emails, she deleted the rest of her emails and it appears they are gone forever. http://abcn.ws/1EozVON
  • ANALYSIS - ABC's RICK KLEIN: About that whole lessons learned thing… An unusual weekend statement provided to reporters by Hillary Clinton's non-campaign sought to clear up a bit of business from the two-week mess surrounding her email accounts. On Thursday, two days after her one and only public explanation for her e-mail arrangement, Time added a new nugget. The magazine reported that the Clinton team searched for keywords in deciding which emails to preserve, rather than reading each one. Other news organizations (including ABC News) sought out the Clinton camp for clarity, and received nothing of substance. Three days later came a clarifying statement: "every email was read." Setting aside the fact that this is not verifiable, since e-mails deemed private have since been destroyed, why would an inaccurate piece of reporting like this be allowed to persist for that long?

THE BUZZ

with ABC's VERONICA STRACQUALURSI

JEB BUSH AND SCOTT WALKER JOSTLE FOR POSITION IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are two possible presidential candidates who were in New Hampshire this weekend for the same reason: to introduce themselves to voters. The former Florida governor faced the challenge of not only using his family name to his advantage but adapting his issues on hot-button topics like the Common Core and immigration to appeal to the Granite State's conservative voters. The Wisconsin governor simply had to tell his personal story to motivate his audience. The enthusiasm that Walker earned at his address to the 2016 Kickoff Grassroots Training Session in Concord hosted by the New Hampshire GOP Saturday was missing at the house party held for Bush Friday night. At the house party, the crowd of roughly 100 invited guests and upward of 60 media attendees packed the home of Fergus Cullen, the state's former GOP chairman, forcing everyone to stand throughout because there was simply no room to sit down. On Saturday, the high school auditorium filled with volunteer activists for Walker's speech all had a seat but chose to get on their feet multiple times throughout his nearly 45-minute speech, ABC's MEGHAN KENEALLY notes. http://abcn.ws/1Fqh9Iy 'THIS WEEK' ROUNDTABLE ON WALKER VS. BUSH : http://abcn.ws/18OU70R

NOTED: WALKER DENIES THAT HE'S FLIP-FLOPPED ON IMMIGRATION. Scott Walker dismissed claims that he is a flip-flopper on immigration Saturday, saying that it's "just a narrative from the other campaigns in response to the fact that we have a strong reputation for keeping our word. "This is one that we listened to the people all across the country-particularly the board of governors-and saw how this president messed that up and that's an issue where I think people want leaders who are willing to listen to people," Walker told media scrum after his speech at a state GOP event in Concord, New Hampshire. A crowd of a couple dozen union workers were parading the street in front of Concord High School ahead of his speech, according to ABC's MEGHAN KENEALLY. http://abcn.ws/1CgR6E4

REPUBLICAN SENATOR STANDS BY IRAN LETTER. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri does not regret signing the open letter to Iran's leaders warning of the limits of a nuclear deal with the Obama administration, unlike some of his Republican Senate colleagues. "I really don't," Blunt told ABC's GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS on "This Week" Sunday when asked whether he had any second thoughts on the letter. The letter, an effort led by freshman Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, was signed by 47 Republican senators including several potential GOP presidential candidates. It said that an agreement between the U.S. and Iran not ratified by Congress should be considered an executive action any future president could revoke. Several GOP signees, including Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., have walked back their support for the tactic after the negative response in Washington and across the country. But Blunt said the letter was "essentially an op-ed," expressing the Senate's role in treaty negotiations, ABC's BENJAMIN SIEGEL writes. http://abcn.ws/1EnOFgF

JEB BUSH: I'M NO HILLARY CLINTON WHEN IT COMES TO EMAIL. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush dedicated his return to New Hampshire after a 15-year-long absence to defining himself outside of his family's shadow and distancing himself from any similarities to another likely presidential candidate with legacy ties: Hillary Clinton. Speaking after a business roundtable with the Nashua Chamber of Commerce on Friday, Bush said that his use of a private email server was "totally different" than that of the former Secretary of State, adding that he had been "totally transparent" about his communication habits, ABC's MEGHAN KENEALLY reports. While Clinton said this week that she used a private account out of "convenience" and later went through a "thorough process" to deliver her work-related messages to the State Department, Bush said he regularly complied with Freedom of Information Act requests during his tenure as governor and later posted a trove of thousands of emails online. http://abcn.ws/1EL6Gs5

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

THE CLINTONS: NOW AND THEN. The Clinton family has been on the national stage since the early 1990s when former Democratic President Bill Clinton took office. Click on the link below to watch the former president, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - who may be on the cusp of launching her own bid for the White House in 2016 in coming weeks - and their daughter Chelsea transform over the past two decades. http://abcn.ws/1Cct25h

IN THE NOTE'S INBOX

STEVE FORBES RE-LAUNCHES POLICY GROUP AHEAD OF 2016. An announcement from a friend of The Note: "Forbes Magazine CEO, Steve Forbes, wants to keep the feet of the potential 2016 presidential candidates and Congress to the fire. Forbes is re-launching a policy organization, Americans for Hope, Growth and Opportunity (AHGO), to urge Congress and the potential 2016 presidential candidates to advocate for a pro-growth agenda that will get America's economic engine going again and free Americans from the chokehold of some of the most suffocating regulations ever seen coming out of Washington. Tomorrow, March 16, Mr. Forbes will be speaking at the Heritage Foundation at 12:00 noon, when he will discuss strategies for American's economic growth going forward." MORE: https://www.ahgo.us/

WHO'S TWEETING?

@FrankBruni: How much Ivy (League) is on the Potomac? What do Christie, Biden, Plouffe, Schmidt share? @ron_fournier on new book, http://tinyurl.com/k54ytp2

@JamesPindell: . @LindseyGrahamSC ramps up staffing for possible 2016 bid http://politi.co/1FpghU5 #fitn #sctweets

@JohnJHarwood: very good from @tripgabriel - Huckabee Pursues Unconventional Ways to Fund a Campaign http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/us/politics/huckabee-pursues-unconventional-ways-to-fund-a-campaign.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share …

@NirajC: For the first time in the 23 years since Gallup started tracking, neither party more than 40% favorability. http://bit.ly/1Cmztml

@ErinMcPike: Walker also has a list of big money donors with him from California, Florida and Texas: http://cnn.it/1LifTMf