The State Department Continues Dragging Its Feet

The State Department Continues Dragging Its Feet

U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg has ordered the Department of State to begin processing at least 1,050 pages of Hillary Clinton emails recovered by the FBI and to provide Judicial Watch all non-exempt documents before November 4.

Here is what I said about the ruling in a public statement:

   The State Department admitted that it has 5,600 Clinton emails recovered by the FBI that were government documents and not personal emails as she claimed. The public deserves to know what is in those emails, well before November 8, and the State Department should not continue dragging its feet on producing them. The State Department admitted in court today it pulled staff off of Clinton email Freedom of Information Act requests. The American people need to pressure State to stop sitting on these new Clinton emails for political reasons and release them as the law requires.  It is outrageous the State Department has had these new Clinton emails since late July, but has only released 5 records.

The court ordered State to process the first 350 pages of documents by October 7, another 350 pages by October 21, and another by November 4.  (The State Department claims a substantial number of the Clinton emails may be duplicative or near duplicative of emails Hillary Clinton previously turned over to the State Department.)

(The State Department confirmed that the FBI discovered 15,100 new Clinton emails as a result of Judicial Watch’s litigation seeking all of Mrs. Clinton’s work related emails (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)).)

There was more good transparency news because of litigation brought by Jason Leopold of Vice News.   He separately negotiated with the Obama State Department to process a few thousand more pages of these new Clinton emails by Election Day.  As Jason reports over at Vice News:

   Hillary Clinton’s damn emails will continue to be a campaign issue leading right up into the presidential election.

   Late Wednesday, the State Department agreed to post to its website by November 3 as many as 1,850 pages of emails that Clinton failed to turn over originally. The FBI recovered the emails during the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s email practices.

So Jason’s success brings the total of pages of email material to be processed up to nearly 3,000.  Imagine if more media follow Jason Leopold’s and JW’s lead in pressing the case for all of Clinton’s emails!  To be clear, just because an email is “processed” doesn’t mean it will be released, so the final total of releasable pages might be lower than 3,000.

I’ll be sure to brief you once we finally start getting the emails.

Tom Fitton
President
Judicial Watch