Good thing we have another horse in the race, no?
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that State Department officials and top aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about whether they intentionally thwarted federal open records laws by using or allowing the use of a private email server throughout Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington came in a lawsuit over public records brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, regarding its May 2013 request, for information about the employment arrangement of a longtime Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.
While it was not immediately clear whether the government would appeal, Sullivan set an April deadline for parties to lay out a detailed investigative plan that would go extend well beyond the limited and carefully worded explanations of the use of the private server so far given by department and Clinton officials.
Full article, which is pretty long, can be parsed here:
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Additional coverage at Reuters:
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch's president, called the ruling "a major victory for the public’s right to know the truth about Hillary Clinton's email system." His group will propose that the testimony include former State Department officials, and may also seek to have Clinton give testimony.
"While Mrs. Clinton's testimony may not be required initially," Fitton said in his statement, "it may happen that her testimony is necessary for the Court to resolve the legal issues about her unprecedented email practices."
The group is suing the department in its effort to get hold of public records about an arrangement it made for Huma Abedin, long one of Clinton's closest aides, to simultaneously work for Clinton's charities and a Clinton-linked consultancy firm while also for Clinton at the State Department.
Abedin is now the vice chairwoman of Clinton's presidential campaign.
The Guardian weighs in as well:
The ruling, which was first reported in the Washington Post, advances an investigation of whether Clinton or others had acted in violation of the Freedom of Information Act.
Clinton seems on track to win the Democratic presidential nomination, with victories in two of three states to have voted so far and a rosy outlook for the contests ahead.
But the emails issue continues to dog her candidacy, distract advisors, feed outrage on the right that Clinton has escaped answering for the episode and feed trepidation on the left that it might cripple her candidacy.
The Barack Obama administration could appeal Sullivan’s ruling, which arose out of a court challenge by a conservative legal watchdog, Judicial Watch. The group had requested information three years ago on the job duties of Abedin, who has variously served as a personal aide, state department staff member and political advisor to Clinton, as well as a private consultant elsewhere.
Politico.com
The process will take months, at the least, meaning the case could easily extend all the way through Election Day and give Republicans new ammunition to use on the trail.
The ruling comes as the FBI is working alongside State and intelligence community inspectors general to investigate whether laws governing the use of classified information were ever broken or if the server posed a security threat. More than 1,600 documents that passed through Clinton’s server have since been classified by State — and a number of them reached the “top secret” level.
Courts have required the State Department to ask the FBI for copies of any additional emails they discovered on the Clinton account to double-check that all official documents were turned over. Conservative groups and lawmakers have suggested that some records that would have been embarrassing to Clinton were intentionally left out, though Clinton’s campaign has said they were over inclusive in deciding what was work-related.
Read more: www.politico.com/...