Illegal Border Crossings v. Visa Overstays

No one can get the image of the train carrying illegals out of their memory and with good reason. When anyone does a search on the internet to determine the actual and factual numbers of immigrants coming across the southern border by year, you will be disappointed, the charts and records are not there. Countless outlets and agencies report but with caveats and obscure labels. Still we are told the border is as secure as it has ever been.

Related reading: The Human Tragedy of Illegal Immigration: Greater Efforts Needed to Combat Smuggling and Violence

What is more chilling, are the reports that once again we are in a spike season of illegal entry due in part to threats of presidential candidates. Further, those already here are filing at an accelerated rate for citizenship for the exact same reason.

There is a clash however in the facts over which is worse, those coming across the border versus those coming in by air or other means possessing a vThe Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables most citizens or nationals of participating countries* to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without first obtaining a visa, when they meet all requirements explained below. Travelers must have a valid Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) approval prior to travel. If you prefer to have a visa in your passport, you may still apply for a visitor (B) visa.isa that has an expiration date. Take note that any international airport across the United States is a port of entry. Once a visa is issued by State Department contractors, it becomes the burden of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance to dates. This is where the problem, yet another lays with fault.

One cannot overlook the Visa Waiver Program concocted by the U.S. State Department of which several in Congress are calling for a suspension.

Citizens or nationals of the following countries* are currently eligible to travel to the United States under the VWP, unless citizens of one of these countries are also a national of Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Sudan.

Andorra Hungary Norway
Australia Iceland Portugal
Austria Ireland San Marino
Belgium Italy Singapore
Brunei Japan Slovakia
Chile Latvia Slovenia
Czech Republic Liechtenstein South Korea
Denmark Lithuania Spain
Estonia Luxembourg Sweden
Finland Malta Switzerland
France Monaco Taiwan*
Germany Netherlands United Kingdom**
Greece New Zealand

There are an estimated 35 unique types of visa classifications under the management of the U.S. State Department.

 

Obama Admin Deported Less Than One Percent of Visa Overstays

Nearly half a million individuals overstayed visas in 2015, fewer than 2,500 deported

Kredo/FreeBeacon: The Obama administration deported less than one percent of the nearly half a million foreign nationals who illegally overstayed their visas in 2015, according to new statistics published by the Department of Homeland Security.

Of the 482,781 aliens who were recorded to have overstayed temporary U.S. visas in fiscal year 2015, just 2,456 were successfully deported from the United States during the same period, according to DHS’s figures, which amounts to a deportation rate of around 0.5 percent.

The sinking rate of deportations by the Obama administration is drawing criticism from Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are warning that the administration is ignoring illegal overstays and potentially opening the United States to terrorist threats.

The 482,781 figure accounts for aliens who entered the United States on a nonimmigrant visitor visa or through the Visa Waiver Program, which streamlines travel between the United States and certain other countries. The figure encompasses foreign nationals who were found to have remained in the United States after their visas expired or after the 90-day window allowed by the Visa Waiver Program.

The actual number of overstays could be higher. The latest figures published by DHS do not include overstays from other visa categories or overstays by individuals who entered the United States through land ports, such as those along the Mexican border.

Deportations by the Obama administration have decreased steadily since 2009, according to figures codified by the Senate’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest and provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

Since 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expelled 51,704 individuals who overstayed their visas. The total number of those expelled has decreased every fiscal year.

At least 12,538 illegal overstays were deported in fiscal 2009, while 11,259 were removed in 2010, 10,426 in 2011, 6,856 in 2012, 4,240 in 2013, 3,564 in 2014, and 2,456 in 2015, according to the committee.

The drop is being attributed by sources to an Obama administration policy directing DHS and ICE not to pursue visa overstays unless the offender has been convicted of major crimes or terrorism.

“The decision by the Obama administration not to enforce immigration laws by allowing those who have overstayed their visas to remain in the country has not gone unnoticed by the American people,” sources on the Senate subcommittee told the Free Beacon. “A Rasmussen Reports poll released earlier this year indicates that approximately 3 out of 4 Americans not only want the Obama administration to find these aliens who overstay their visas, but also to deport them.”

“The same poll indicates that 68 percent of Americans consider visa overstays a ‘serious national security risk,’ and 31 percent consider visa overstays a ‘very serious’ national security risk,” according to the sources.

Congress has long mandated the implementation of a biometric entry-exit system to track individuals who overstay their visas and ensure they leave the United States.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), chair of the Senate’s immigration subcommittee, recently proposed an amendment aimed at speeding up implementation of this system. Senate Democrats blocked the amendment.

97d0ba07-f3c5-45eb-9b87-ba1ec93c169a

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has received substantially more taxpayer money in recent years despite the plummeting rate of deportations. At least 43 percent fewer aliens were removed from the United States from 2012 to 2015, according to DHS statistics.

Today: National Change Your Password Day, Why?

Russian Hackers Have 270 Million Email Logins, Including Gmail and Yahoo Accounts

Gizmodo: A report from Reuters suggests that over 270 million hacked email credentials—including those from Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo—are circulating among Russian digital crime rings.

Reuters reports that an investigation by Hold Security revealed the huge stash of login details, that are said to be being traded among criminals. Many of the credentials relate to the Russian email service Mail.ru, but the team has also identified details from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Update: There may, however, not be too much cause for concern, as Motherboard points out that the data may in fact be taken from a series of older hacks, which means the credentials are likely useless.

The team from Hold Security was offered a tranche of 1.17 billion email user records in an online forum, and asked to pay just $1 for a copy of the data. The team refused to pay for stolen data, but was given the information anyway when it offered to post positive comments about the hacker online.

The team has since sifted through the data set to remove duplicates, revealing that it contains 270 million unique records. Alex Holden, the founder of Hold Security, told Reuters that the data was “potent,” adding that the “credentials can be abused multiple times.”

Hold Security has apparently alerted all of the affected email providers. Mail.ru, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are all now investigating the situation.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Gizmodo that “unfortunately, there are places on the internet where leaked and stolen credentials are posted,” adding that it “has security measures in place to detect account compromise and requires additional information to verify the account owner and help them regain sole access to their account.”

It may be that the stash is out of date and doesn’t present too much of a security threat—though, of course, it could be a new pool of data, in which case the accounts included in the tranche could be at risk. Initial reports to the BBC from Mail.ru suggest that, from a sample of the records, there may not be many live email-passwords combinations in the data.

But it may be a good time to refresh your password anyway.

****

In a Wednesday statement, Mail.ru said its early analysis suggests many username/password combinations contain the same username paired with different passwords.

“We are now checking whether any username/password combinations match valid login information for our email service, and as soon as we have enough information we will warn the users that might have been affected,” the Russian service said.

The cache reportedly included tens of millions of certificates for Google Gmail, Microsoft Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, as well as German and Chinese email providers.

“Unfortunately, there are places on the Internet where leaked and stolen credentials are posted, and when we come across these or someone sends them to us, we act to protect customers,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told PCMag. “Microsoft has security measures in place to detect account compromise and requires additional information to verify the account owner and help them regain sole access to their account.”

Google declined to comment, while Yahoo did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request.

The junior hacker—either inexperienced in the art of haggling, or just too rich to care—asked for only 50 rubles in exchange for the “incredibly large set of data.” Equivalent to about 75 cents, the payment request did little to boost Hold Security’s confidence in the data’s credibility and value. The move was “similar to an expensive sports car being sold for pennies at auction,” the firm said.

Hold refused to pay and convinced the hacker to trade the data for likes/votes on his social media page.

“At the end, this kid from a small town in Russia collected an incredible 1.17 billion stolen credentials from numerous breaches that we are still working on identifying,” Hold Security said. More from PC Magazine.

*****

In a shocking report from FireEye Inc., a California security firm with top government connections, as well as three other reports, the existence of a Russian-based hacker group, which appears to be a joint effort by the Russian government and the Russian Mafia, has been revealed, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Terming the hacker attack “Safacy” or “APT28,” the computer anti-hacking firm’s report, called “A Window Into Russia’s Cyber Espionage Operations,” notes, “We assess that APT28’s work is sponsored by the Russian government” and is more technically sophisticated than Chinese-hacking efforts earlier detected and exposed by FireEye, the report states.
“I worry a lot more about the Russians” than about China, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said at a University of Texas forum, the Journal reports. More from NewsMax.

Hillary Paid for Document/Hard Drive Destruction

Dates matter, so it would take some time to put the chronology together but certainly the subpoenas, FOIA requests and testimonies would clearly have occurred before February and March of 2016. It would appear obstruction of an FBI investigation and congressional procedures and law has entered a new realm by the Clinton camp.

We cant know the status at this point of the FBI investigation, but there are some great journalists that are doing some collateral investigations. It is clear there are known and unknown moving parts, such that Hillary are her team may not be able to survive this at all, even given the denials by her legal teams.

Clinton Campaign Made Payments to Hard Drive and Document Destruction Company

Payments could have purchased destruction of 14 hard drives

FreeBeacon: The Hillary Clinton campaign made multiple payments to a company that specializes in hard drive and document destruction, campaign finance records show.

The payments, which were recorded in February and March of 2016, went to the Nevada-based American Document Destruction, Inc., which claims expertise in destroying hard drives or “anything else that a hard drive can come from.”

“Our hard drive destruction procedures take place either at your site or at our secure facility in Sparks, NV,” the company’s website states. “This decision is yours to decide based on cost and convenience to you. In either situation, the hard drive will be destroyed by a shredding.”

“We have a dedicated machine for hard drive destruction,” the website continues. “We will also record the serial numbers of all drives to be destroyed to be kept in our records. A copy of this log can be provided to you as well.”

The routine services section of the site says that the company operates in 26 areas in Nevada and California, including Reno, Virginia City, Sparks, Tahoe City, and Carson City.

“Our equipment is powerful. Whether you require ON SITE or OFF SITE service, performed at our Sparks facility, large volumes can be quickly destroyed regardless of staples, clips or fasteners,” the site says. “Office paper, folders, binders and computer media can be destroyed in just minutes. As a result, we pass the savings on to you! A new service we also offer is computer hard drive destruction, either ON-SITE or OFF-SITE.”

“ADDNV, Inc. ensures that even small amounts are economical to have destroyed. ADDNV, Inc. encourages our clients to visit the Sparks facility to observe the shredding of your documents. The added bonus with ADDNV, Inc. is that we offer personal service whenever you need it. We can be reached locally and our customers are more than just account numbers in a large franchise.”

Transactions from Hillary for America to American Document Destruction, Inc. were made to the Sparks, Nevada location.

The first payment from the campaign to the destruction company came on Feb. 3 in the amount of $43, Federal Election Commission filings shows.

Two additional payments of $43 and $58 were made on Feb. 21. A fourth payment of $43 was made on March 26, bringing the amount paid to the destruction company to $187.

The Washington Free Beacon contacted American Document Destruction, Inc. to inquire about its rates.

An employee for the company said that it charges $10 per hard drive and $5 per cubic foot of paper. The Clinton campaign could have destroyed 14 hard drives or shredded 37.4 cubic feet of paper at those rates.

The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment about what documents it paid to have destroyed.

*****

There is evidence that Marcel Lazar Lehel, (Guccifer) gained unauthorized access to Hillary’s server. Some in media are asking about his hacking the server. There is a distinct difference between entry and hacking. Guccifer has admitted to Fox News that he did gain entry and noticed several foreign IP addresses there as well as information about voting. It could be that he had no real interest in that kind of information on her server, so he chose not to exploit anything further in that regard to the media.

To date, there is nothing in Lehel’s responses that appear to be erroneous as compared to what has been determined in the official investigations.

Romanian hacker Guccifer: I breached Clinton server, ‘it was easy’

Fox EXCLUSIVE: The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013.

“For me, it was easy … easy for me, for everybody,” Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker “Guccifer,” told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held.

Guccifer’s potential role in the Clinton email investigation was first reported by Fox News last month. The hacker subsequently claimed he was able to access the server – and provided extensive details about how he did it and what he found – over the course of a half-hour jailhouse interview and a series of recorded phone calls with Fox News.

Fox News could not independently confirm Lazar’s claims.

In response to Lazar’s claims, the Clinton campaign issued a statement  Wednesday night saying, “There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton’s server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”

The former secretary of state’s server held nearly 2,200 emails containing information now deemed classified, and another 22 at the “Top Secret” level.

The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time.

“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff,” Guccifer said.

The hacker spoke freely with Fox News from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he’s been held since his extradition to the U.S. on federal charges relating to other alleged cyber-crimes. Wearing a green jumpsuit, Lazar was relaxed and polite in the monitored secure visitor center, separated by thick security glass.

In describing the process, Lazar said he did extensive research on the web and then guessed Blumenthal’s security question. Once inside Blumenthal’s account, Lazar said he saw dozens of messages from the Clinton email address.

Asked if he was curious about the address, Lazar merely smiled. Asked if he used the same security question approach to access the Clinton emails, he said no – then described how he allegedly got inside.

“For example, when Sidney Blumenthal got an email, I checked the email pattern from Hillary Clinton, from Colin Powell from anyone else to find out the originating IP. … When they send a letter, the email header is the originating IP usually,” Lazar explained.

He said, “then I scanned with an IP scanner.”

Lazar  emphasized that he used readily available web programs to see if the server was “alive” and which ports were open. Lazar identified programs like netscan, Netmap, Wireshark and Angry IP, though it was not possible to confirm independently which, if any, he used.

In the process of mining data from the Blumenthal account, Lazar said he came across evidence that others were on the Clinton server.

“As far as I remember, yes, there were … up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world,” he said.

With no formal computer training, he did most of his hacking from a small Romanian village.

Lazar said he chose to use “proxy servers in Russia,” describing them as the best, providing anonymity.

Cyber experts who spoke with Fox News said the process Lazar described is plausible. The federal indictment Lazar faces in the U.S. for cyber-crimes specifically alleges he used “a proxy server located in Russia” for the Blumenthal compromise.

Each Internet Protocol (IP) address has a unique numeric code, like a phone number or home address.  The Democratic presidential front-runner’s home-brew private server was reportedly installed in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and used for all U.S. government business during her term as secretary of state.

Former State Department IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, who installed and maintained the server, has been granted immunity by the Department of Justice and is cooperating with the FBI in its ongoing criminal investigation into Clinton’s use of the private server. An intelligence source told Fox News last month that Lazar also could help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server may have been compromised by a third party.

Asked what he would say to those skeptical of his claims, Lazar cited “the evidence you can find in the Guccifer archives as far as I can remember.”

Writing under his alias Guccifer, Lazar released to media outlets in March 2013 multiple exchanges between Blumenthal and Clinton. They were first reported by the Smoking Gun.

It was through the Blumenthal compromise that the Clintonemail.com accounts were first publicly revealed.

As recently as this week, Clinton said neither she nor her aides had been contacted by the FBI about the criminal investigation. Asked whether the server had been compromised by foreign hackers, she told MSNBC on Tuesday, “No, not at all.”

Recently extradited, Lazar faces trial Sept. 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for his alleged hacking crimes in the U.S. Victims are not named in the indictment but reportedly include Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family and others including Blumenthal.

Lazar spoke extensively about Blumenthal’s account, noting his emails were “interesting” and had information about “the Middle East and what they were doing there.”

After first writing to the accused hacker on April 19, Fox News accepted two collect calls from him, over a seven-day period, before meeting with him in person at the jail. During these early phone calls, Lazar was more guarded.

After the detention center meeting, Fox News conducted additional interviews by phone and, with Lazar’s permission, recorded them for broadcast.

While Lazar’s claims cannot be independently verified, three computer security specialists, including two former senior intelligence officials, said the process described is plausible and the Clinton server, now in FBI custody, may have an electronic record that would confirm or disprove Guccifer’s claims.

“This sounds like the classic attack of the late 1990s. A smart individual who knows the tools and the technology and is looking for glaring weaknesses in Internet-connected devices,” Bob Gourley, a former chief technology officer (CTO) for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said.

Gourley, who has worked in cybersecurity for more than two decades, said the programs cited to access the server can be dual purpose. “These programs are used by security professionals to make sure systems are configured appropriately. Hackers will look and see what the gaps are, and focus their energies on penetrating a system,” he said.

Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright observed, “The Blumenthal account gave [Lazar] a road map to get to the Clinton server. … You get a foothold in one system. You get intelligence from that system, and then you start to move.”

In March, the New York Times reported the Clinton server security logs showed no evidence of a breach.  On whether the Clinton security logs would show a compromise, Wright made the comparison to a bank heist: “Let’s say only one camera was on in the bank. If you don‘t have them all on, or the right one in the right locations, you won’t see what you are looking for.”

Gourley said the logs may not tell the whole story and the hard drives, three years after the fact, may not have a lot of related data left. He also warned: “Unfortunately, in this community, a lot people make up stories and it’s hard to tell what’s really true until you get into the forensics information and get hard facts.”

For Lazar, a plea agreement where he cooperates in exchange for a reduced sentence would be advantageous. He told Fox News he has nothing to hide and wants to cooperate with the U.S. government, adding that he has hidden two gigabytes of data that is “too hot” and “it is a matter of national security.”

In early April, at the time of Lazar’s extradition from a Romanian prison where he already was serving a seven-year sentence for cyber-crimes, a former senior FBI official said the timing was striking.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014.

The FBI offered no statement to Fox News.

Porn Scandal in Federal Govt Continues

SMH = Shaking my Head

Feds Have Found ‘Unbelievable’ Amounts of Child Porn on National Security Computers. Is This the Solution?

A top National Security Agency official wants to keep tabs on national security personnel off-the-clock, in part by tracking their online habits at home. The aim is to spot behavior that might not be in America’s best interests.

Historically, some illicit activity, like downloading child pornography, which is different to perfectly legal and enjoyable content from sites similar to tubev, has occurred on government computers and been prosecuted.

But today, the digital lives of employees cleared to access classified information extend beyond the office.

About 80 percent of the National Security Agency workforce has retired since Sept. 11, 2001, says Kemp Ensor, NSA director of security. When the millennial and Gen Y staff that now populate the spy agency get home, they go online.

“That is where were we need to be, that’s where we need to mine,” Ensor said.

Currently, managers only look for aberrant computer behavior on internal, agency-owned IT systems – it’s a practice known as “continuous monitoring.”

But the military and intelligence communities are beginning to broaden checks on cleared personnel in the physical and digital worlds. It used to be that national security workers were re-investigated only every five or 10 years.

Under the evolving “continuous evaluation” model, the government will periodically search for signs of problems through, for example, court records, financial transactions, and — if authorized — social media posts.

Ensor and other federal officials spoke April 28 about new trends in personnel security at an Intelligence and National Security Alliance symposium in Chantilly, Virginia.

On government devices, “the amount of child porn I see is just unbelievable,” said Daniel Payne, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service. The point being, there’s a need to routinely scan agency network activity and criminal records to gauge an individual’s suitability to handle classified information.

Payne, whose 34 years of counterintelligence experience have spanned the military, CIA and National Counterintelligence and Security Center, was not referring to any specific agency or any specific timeframe, his current employer told Nextgov.

Payne just returned to the Defense Security Service in February, after starting his career there.

“Director Payne provided this example to demonstrate the range of issues identified during the personnel security process, and the range and value of different data sources that have a bearing on an individual’s ability to access sensitive information,” the Defense Security Service said in an emailed statement.

Ensor echoed his colleague’s concerns, noting he sees child pornography on NSA IT systems. In the national security space, “what people do is amazing,” he said. Ensor’s guess about the presence of explicit material is that there are many “introverts staring at computer screens” day in and day out. This is why it is so important to look at individuals holistically when determining who might be a so-called insider threat, Ensor said.

In the past, military and intelligence personnel have exploited minors online, without notice, for years or even an entire career.

The Boston Globe broke a story in 2010 that a significant number of federal employees and contractors with high-level security clearances downloaded child pornography — sometimes on government computers — at NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office, among other defense agencies.

At least one NSA contractor holding a top secret clearance told investigators in 2007 he had been spending $50 to $60 monthly fees on various sexually explicit websites similar to hdpornvideo.xxx for the past three years, according to a Defense inspector general report on the matter. After each session on the porn sites, he would wipe the browsing history of that system. The Pentagon investigation did not state who owned the computer.

More recently, a military official pleaded guilty to pedophile crimes and accessing child pornography through the Internet — but at home.

On April 15, a U.S. district judge sentenced former Army Corps of Engineers official Michael Beeman, of Virginia, to 30 years in prison for molesting minors, beginning in the 1980s while working in public affairs at Patrick Air Force Base. He later downloaded child pornography to personal devices, court records show.

Case files state the illegal online activity occurred between 2010 and 2014, which according to LinkedIn, was when Beeman served as an Army Corps of Engineers public affairs regional chief.

Judge Signals Hillary for Deposition on Emails/Then Trump

Federal judge opens the door to Clinton deposition in email case

A federal judge on Wednesday opened the door to interviewing Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton as part of a review into her use of a private email server while secretary of State.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia laid out the ground rules for interviewing multiple State Department officials about the emails, with an eye toward finishing the depositions in the weeks before the party nominating conventions.

Clinton herself may be forced to answer questions under oath, Sullivan said, though she is not yet being forced to take that step.

“Based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary,” Sullivan said in an order on Wednesday. [READ THE ORDER BELOW] Discovery is the formal name for the evidence-gathering process, which includes depositions.

“If plaintiff believes Mrs. Clinton’s testimony is required, it will request permission from the Court at the appropriate time.”

The order, which came in the course of a lawsuit from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, leaves open the possibility that Clinton will be forced to answer detailed questions on the eve of her formal selection as the Democratic presidential nominee about her creation of the server.

Any deposition would surely roil the presidential race and force her campaign to confront the issue, which has dogged her for a year. “Her legal team is really going to fight that really hard,” predicted Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who has raised questions about Clinton’s email setup.

“You have to take her deposition in this case to fully understand how it was designed and the whys and the what-fors.”

While leaving the door open to Clinton’s eventual deposition, Sullivan on Wednesday ordered at least six current and former State Department employees to answer questions from Judicial Watch, which has filed multiple lawsuits over the Clinton email case.

That list includes longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy, former executive secretary Stephen Mull and Bryan Pagliano, the IT official believed to be responsible for setting up and maintaining the server.

The judge also ordered the State Department to prepare a formal answer about Clinton’s emails. Donald Reid, a senior security official, may also be asked to answer questions, if Judicial Watch so decides.

That process is scheduled to be wrapped up within eight weeks, putting the deadline in the final week of June.

Judicial Watch brought suit against the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an effort to bring Abedin’s emails to light. The lawsuit has since evolved into a battleground over Clinton’s use of the private server.

Clinton’s Republican critics have repeatedly accused her of setting up the private server and then deleting roughly half its contents to evade public scrutiny. In the process, her critics say, Clinton may have made government secrets vulnerable to hackers.

The FBI and government inspectors general are conducting separate investigations related to the server, and the prospect that classified information might have been mishandled.

Clinton has said that she has yet to be contacted by the FBI to set up an interview as part of its investigation, despite long speculation that she will be.

But any deposition in the Judicial Watch case could frustrate that process for Clinton’s camp.

“You only want your client to tell their story once if at all,” said Whitaker. “If you’re going to stake out some ground in a deposition which is under oath, that’s really a dangerous opportunity to lay out a story that you say is true under penalty of perjury and then it might be used against you, ultimately, if you have to take the stand again.”

In his order, Sullivan pointed to revelations from the emails appearing to show officials trying to evade demands of FOIA.

In one email, for instance, Mull told Abedin that Clinton’s emails “would be subject to FOIA requests” if she used a department-issued BlackBerry, even though her identity would remain secret.

Abedin responded that the idea “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

In February, Sullivan ruled that the evidence-gathering process could proceed, and the two sides have been haggling since then.

Sullivan had previously suggested that Clinton could be forced to respond to questions, but his order on Wednesday offered the clearest indication that it remains a real possibility.

In his order on Wednesday, Sullivan denied the organization’s efforts to combine his granting of depositions and a similar decision by another judge in a separate case.

******

In part from National Law Journal: Clinton’s personal lawyer, Williams & Connolly of counsel David Kendall, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately return a request for comment.

If Clinton is subpoenaed to testify, she wouldn’t be the only presidential candidate personally involved in litigation.

In February, a District of Columbia Superior Court judge ordered Donald Trump to sit for a deposition in his lawsuit against celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian, who abandoned plans for a restaurant in Trump’s new hotel in downtown Washington.

Superior Court Judge Brian Holeman said that Trump’s campaign schedule wasn’t a shield against deposition. “Neither the rules nor the controlling authority create a special exception for individuals that that ‘may have a busy schedule’ as a result of seeking public office,” Holeman wrote.

Trump could also be called as a witness in cases in California and New York about Trump University, a now-closed for-profit institution accused of fraud. Trump, according to news reports, is on the witness list in the case in California, and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has said that Trump would be an “essential” witness at trial. Read more.

 

Judicial Watch v Dept of State by Julian Hattem