On the same day, a federal judge ruled on the State Department’s production schedule for previously undisclosed work-related emails uncovered by the FBI during its probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server while Secretary of State.
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The judge ordered the U.S. State Department to finish processing 1,050 pages of material for release by November 4, just days before Americans go to the polls, the Wall Street Journal said.
Notes from interviews conducted with longtime Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal are also included as are notes from an interview with Marcel Lehel Lazar, the hacker known as Guccifer who hacked into Blumenthal’s personal email account. Processing the documents would involve reviewing them to decide what can be released. The DOJ lawyer representing the State Department said that a “substantial number” in the batch include duplicates or near duplicates. It is outrageous the State Department has had these new Clinton emails since late July, but has only released 5 records.
The first batch of new emails comes in response to a court order issued today in a November 13, 2015, Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed against the Department of State seeking all communications between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House from the day of the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and throughout the following week.
Boasberg’s decision to delay the releases, he said Friday, was the product of the State Department’s claim that it was over-burdened by dozens of lawsuits and thousands of FOIA requests related to the four years Clinton was secretary of state.
Production will begin October 7, with subsequent releases October 21 and November 4 – four days before the election. He went as so far as to describe the State Department’s handling of Clinton’s emails as an “absolutely corrupt process”. The FBI closed that investigation without recommending any charges.
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“How can anyone think that the State Department is doing anything but doing Mrs. Clinton a favor?” Her attorneys deleted another 30,000 that they deemed purely personal-some of which were recovered by the Bureau as part of its investigation.
