The Justice Department closed the email investigation without criminal charges, and FBI Director James B. Comey has said investigators did not believe emails on the private server were intentionally deleted in an effort to hide them, but purged through normal processes. The State Department’s lawyer said it would need until the end of September to review the emails and redact potentially classified information before they are released.
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[U.S. District Court Judge Amit] Mehta questioned why it would take so long to release so few documents, and urged that the process be sped up.
The discovery of 30 such emails is significant because Clinton has repeatedly assured the public, Congress and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that she turned over all work-related communications in late 2014.
In a separate development Tuesday, Judicial Watch submitted 25 questions to Clinton about her 2009 decision to rely on a private server in the basement of her NY home rather than a government email account.
It remains unclear how numerous recovered emails will be deemed part of the agency’s record by the State Department, clearing the way for their release, and how long that review process will take.
Among the questions, drawn up by the watchdog group Judicial Watch with the permission of a federal judge, the Democratic presidential nominee is asked to explain under oath why and how that private e-mail system was created, when she chose to use it for official business, if she understood such messages would be subject to disclosure under the federal Freedom of Information Act and whether anyone warned her about the risks of hacking.
The FBI could release on Wednesday the details of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, according to news reports.
While the emails have not yet revealed the direct “pay to play” relationship for donors that he has at time alleged existed, it does suggest a less than transparent system of operations at the State Department under Clinton.
“I provided all of my emails that could possibly be work related”, Clinton said on March 10, 2015.
A spokesman for the department noted that the approximately 30 documents in question are still being examined and may include duplicates of the emails already turned over by Clinton’s staff and released to the public.
The FBI this month provided Congress portions of its file from the agency’s yearlong investigation into whether then-Secretary of State Clinton and her top aides mishandled classified information that flowed through a private email server in the basement of her NY home.
FBI Director James Comey did not recommend charges as a result of the investigation into Hillary’s email practices, but concluded that the former secretary of state and her closest aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.
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“At this point there are 30 potentially responsive documents” to the Benghazi matter, meaning potentially work-related emails, Justice Department attorney Robert Prince told Mehta Tuesday.
