The chairman of a House committee investigating the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya, said Tuesday that he wants to interview Hillary Rodham Clinton by May 1. That timeframe would put the next round of what' been called 'email-gate' in the middle of Clinton's likely timetable for announcing a presidential campaign. South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi committee's chairman, said in a letter to Clinton's lawyer that a recorded and transcribed interview would help the committee better understand decisions Clinton made 'relevant to the creation, maintenance, retention, and ultimately deletion of public records' — namely her emails during the four years she was secretary of state. At that point, he continued, the committee would consider calling her to testify under oath in an open, public hearing. SCROLL DOWN TO READ GOWDY'S DEMAND LETTER . DEADLINE: Hillary Clinton has until May 1 to sit down with congressional investigators and discuss her use of a private email address from 2009 to 2013 – along with what happened to tens of thousands of her messages . INQUISITOR: Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican congressman who was a hard-nosed prosecutor before winning his seat in Congress, is calling the shots but has limited authority and can't subpoena Clinton's computer hardware . Gowdy announced Friday that Clinton's attorney, David Kendall, said she had wiped her private email server 'clean' and permanently deleted all emails from it. Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, exclusively used a private email account and her own server during her tenure at State from 2009 to 2013. Her spokesman Nick Merrill told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Clinton told Gowdy's committee months ago that she was ready to appear at a public hearing. 'It is by their choice that hasn't happened,' Merrill said. 'To be clear, she remains ready to appear at a hearing open to the American public.' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest put some distance between Clinton and the Obama administration on Tuesday afternoon, referring to her as a 'private citizen.' THE LAWYER: David Kendall, whose service to the Clintons goes back past President Bill Clinton's impeachment and all the way back to his days as Arkansas governor, is catching legal spears for Hillary as 'email-gate' grows . 'This will obviously be a discussion for the leaders in that committee and Secretary Clinton and her team to have, so I don't have an opinion on it,' Earnest told reporters in his daily briefing. Asked if Clinton should ultimately sit with Republicans for an in-person grilling, he replied: 'That will be a decision for her to make.' Earnest contended that the White House has provided the committee with enough information. 'We certainly have,' he claimed Tuesday. But Clinton has refused Gowdy's request to turn over her email server, housed at her upstate New York home, to a third party for an independent review. If the Secretary continues to reject the offer of a neutral review,' Gowdy wrote in his letter to Kendall, 'the House of Representatives as a whole will need to consider its next steps.' Kendall said Friday that Clinton has already turned over to the State Department all work-related emails, about 30,000 in all. Gowdy, however, said Clinton lacked the authority to determine what was and wasn't a government document subject to archiving. Clinton confirmed in a press conference this month that she deleted the rest, more than 32,000 emails. White House press secretary Josh Earnest seemingly cut Hillary loose on Tuesday, calling her a 'private citizen' and saying it was up to her to decide whether or not to cooperate . CONNECTED: Hillary Clinton was never far from her mobile smartphone as secretary of state, but only her closest confidantes knew the device was communicating with a private email server at her house – not a government system at the State Department . Kendall also said it would be pointless for Clinton to turn over her server, since 'no emails ... reside on the server or on any backup systems associated with the server.' But technical experts cited in news reports point out that the same argument was made early in an investigation of former IRS official Lois Lerner. Lerner was accused of conspiring to user her authority to slow-walk or deny tax-exemption applications filed by conservative nonprofits in order to put them at a political disadvantage. She claimed a hard-drive crash wiped out years of her email traffic, but the IRS inspector general later found usable archives covering large portions of the missing material. Gowdy said Tuesday that it is technically possible in many instances to recover electronic information that has been deleted or overwritten. 'It is precisely for this reason a neutral and objective party must have access to the server and related equipment to identify information potentially responsive to relevant laws and investigative requests,' he wrote in a letter to Kendall. Gowdy also reminded Kendall that the server and any associated information, data, backups and equipment 'must be preserved wherever they reside and that any further deletion or destruction of data or information must cease.' Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Benghazi panel, said Clinton agreed to testify months ago, in public and under oath, 'so the Select Committee's claim that it has no choice but to subject her to a private staff interview is inaccurate.' Rather than drag out what he called a 'political charade,' Cummings said, the committee should schedule a public hearing with Clinton, make her email public 'and re-focus its efforts on the attacks in Benghazi.' Four Americans were killed in the September 2012 attacks, including U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Gowdy Letter to Hillary Clinton's Lawyer About Email-gate uploaded by DailyMail.com .
Her spokesman insists she's ready to testify in public about 'email-gate'
First step would be a recorded and transcribed interview with lawmakers and their lawyers . GOP chairman of committee investigating 2012 Benghazi terror attacks wants a third-party expert to examine Clinton's email server . Clinton has refused, with her lawyer admitting she had wiped it clean . Republicans demand an interview by May 1, a deadline that could complicate Clinton's plan to announce a presidential run . White House distances itself from the conflict, putting responsibility on Clinton to butt heads with Republicans on Capitol Hill .