Hillary Clinton's Benghazi Emails: Judge Tells State Dept. To Find Them

WASHINGTON, DC — We know you've missed them, so now they're back. Hillary Clinton's emails — and even better, her Benghazi emails — are once again in the spotlight after a judge ordered the State Department to dredge up any of the former secretary's emails related to the 2012 attack on an American embassy that may exist on its servers.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, continues to press for the release of Clinton's emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, we've been down this road many times before, and the courts have ordered the State Department to turn over Benghazi-related emails before. The department has supplied relevant documents from the emails that Clinton and her aides turned over. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that this is insufficient. The State Department must search through its own internal records, which may include emails from Clinton to staffers in the agency. Even under the Trump administration, the department has tried to avoid complying with such requests.

"Although State expanded its search beyond its own records system to include review of records from certain non-State-controlled sources, FOIA requires it to do more," Mehta wrote in her ruling. "State has an obligation to search its own server for responsive records."

Since taking office, President Trump has said multiple times that the Department of Justice should still be investigating Clinton.

The judge's order and Judicial Watch's petition, however, are not directly related to the famous FBI investigation of Clinton's emails that thrust former bureau Director James Comey on to the national stage. Comey investigated whether Clinton broke any laws by maintaining a private email server while serving as secretary of State. Though he concluded her actions were unwise and objectionable, he said no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against her.

While the judge's order could ultimately reveal information relevant to this investigation, the ruling has more direct implications for the controversies surrounding the 2012 Benghazi attacks. Clinton was accused by many critics of dissembling about the nature of the attacks during their immediate aftermath in an attempt to cover up the incidence's significance. Clinton has maintained that any confusion or poor communication on her or her department's part was the result of the situation's complexity and uncertain intelligence at the time.

Judicial Watch is also separately working with the department to obtain the thousands of emails that Clinton turned over during the FBI investigation.

Read the full ruling>>

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