Just when we thought Hillary might simply go away (and become some sort of Methodist minister), the Benghazi controversy is back again like a bad meal at midnight.
A federal judge — an Obama appointee no less — ruled this week in another FOIA case brought by Judicial Watch that the State Department has an “obligation to search its own servers for responsive” emails either to or from Hillary on the state.gov addresses.
Now, if you’re wondering whether and why that wasn’t done in the first place, the answer is fairly obvious: no because obstruction.
Attorneys for the State Department offered an official argument that no one seemed to be very interested in the investigation so they didn’t bother to search their own servers for relevant emails.
Predictably, the judge was none to pleased by that logic.
Here’s more from Fox News…
A federal judge has ordered the State Department to search the “state.gov” email accounts of Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jacob Sullivan for records related to Benghazi, as part of a watchdog’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Amit Mehta made the call Tuesday, describing the FOIA lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch in March 2015 as “a far cry from a typical FOIA case.”
He noted that “Secretary Clinton used a private e-mail server located in her home, to transmit and receive work-related communications during her tenure as Secretary of State.”
“The sole remaining dispute in this case is the adequacy of State’s search for responsive records,” Mehta wrote in his opinion and order, noting the State Department has argued the search through Clinton aides’ emails “is likely to be unfruitful.”
But Mehta wrote that the State Department “has not, however, searched the one records system over which it has always had control and that is almost certain to contain some responsive records: the state.gov email server.”
“If Secretary Clinton sent an email about Benghazi to Abedin, Mills, or Sullivan at his or her state.gov email address, or if one of them sent an e-mail to Secretary Clinton using his or her state.gov account, then State’s server presumably would have captured and stored such an email,” Mehta wrote. “State has an obligation to search its own server for responsive records.”
