Clinton Email Update: Judicial Watch Releases Clinton Email Deposition Testimony of Karin Lang, Director, Executive Secretariat Staff

Clinton Email Update: Judicial Watch Releases Clinton Email Deposition Testimony of Karin Lang, Director, Executive Secretariat Staff

JUNE 09, 2016

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Karin Lang, director of executive secretariat staff and designated representative for the State Department. The Lang transcript is available here. Lang was designated by the State Department as its 30(b)(6) witness. A 30(b)(6) witness is assigned to provide the agency’s testimony on the Clinton email issue.

Lang testified that key State Department federal recordkeeping officials did not know that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aide Huma Abedin were using non-state.gov email to conduct government business. She also testified that the State Department could not say whether Clinton or Abedin has turned over all emails in their possession that may be potentially responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of the Information Act (FOIA) request. Lang also said that it would not be reasonable to search all 70,000 State Department email accounts in order to retrieve Clinton’s emails. (Clinton has suggested that the State Department would have many of her emails because she sent most of them to State Department employees on their government accounts.)

Lang also signed, under the penalty of perjury, State Department answers to Judicial Watch’s written interrogatories about the Clinton email system and FOIA. The State Department acknowledged in its answers that it “has no method of identifying which State Department officials and employees had and/or used an account on clintonemail.com to conduct official government business.”

Former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano had been scheduled to testify on June 6, but will be rescheduled pending further order of Judge Sullivan, who ruled Friday that Pagliano must provide to the court his reported immunity agreement and the legal basis for making Fifth Amendment claims.

Lang’s deposition is one among seven depositions of former Clinton top aides and State Department officials that Judicial Watch has scheduled.

Lang’s testimony and other discovery arises in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Clinton during her tenure at the State Department. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). Judge Sullivan ordered that all deposition transcripts be made publicly available.

Abedin is scheduled to testify on June 28, and top State Department official Patrick Kennedy on June 29.

More information about this litigation is available here.