The State Department has apparently had them for a month and has been really slow-rolling the release. Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is in court today…remember, Hillary said she wanted everything released to the public.
FBI uncovered tens of thousands more documents in Clinton email probe
WashingtonPost: The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered tens of thousands more documents from her time as secretary of state that were not previously disclosed by her attorneys. The State Department is expected to discuss when and how it will release the emails Monday morning in federal court.
The total — confirmed by the Justice Department — was disclosed by a conservative legal group after the State Department said last week that it would hand over the emails. The number to be released is nearly 50 percent more than the 30,000-plus that Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.
Lawyers for the State Department and Judicial Watch, the legal group, said in an Aug. 12 court filing that they intended to negotiate a plan for the release, part of a civil public records lawsuit before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton tweeted Monday morning that the “FBI found almost 15,000 new Clinton documents. When will State release them?” In an interview, he said: “It looks like the State Department is trying to slow roll the release of the records. They’ve had them for at least a month, and we still don’t know when we’re going to get them.”
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According to Fitton, lawyers for the government said they plan to set a rolling release schedule in October, weeks before November’s general election.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on pending litigation. A State Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo: Politico
Related reading: Colin Powell Says Hillary Clinton’s ‘People Have Been Trying to Pin’ Email Scandal on Him
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in May 2015 after disclosures that Clinton had exclusively used a personal email server while secretary from 2009 to 2013. Judicial Watch had sought all emails sent or received by Clinton at State in a request made under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which covers the release of public records.
Monday’s hearing comes seven weeks after the Justice Department on July 7 closed a criminal investigation without charges into the handling of classified material in Clinton’s email set-up, which FBI Director James B. Comey Jr. called “extremely careless.”
The FBI on Aug. 5 completed transferring all of what Comey said were several thousand previously undisclosed work-related Clinton emails that the FBI found in its investigation for the State Department to review and make public. Government lawyers until now have given no details about how many emails the FBI found or when the full set would be released. It’s unclear how many of the 15,000 or so documents might be attachments, duplicates or exempt from release for various legal reasons.
Government lawyers disclosed last week that the FBI turned over six computer discs of information: one including e-mails and attachments that were sent directly to or from Clinton, or to or from her at some point in an e-mail chain, and not previously turned over by her lawyers; a second with classified documents; another with emails returned by Clinton; and three others containing materials from other individuals retrieved by the FBI.
The roughly 15,000 documents at issue now come from the first disc, Fitton said.
In announcing the FBI’s findings July 5, Comey said investigators found no evidence that the emails it found “were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.” Like many users, Clinton periodically deleted emails or they were purged when devices were changed.
Clinton’s lawyers also may have deleted some of the emails as “personal,” Comey said, noting their review relied on header information and search terms, not a line-by-line reading as the FBI conducted.
