U.S. appeals court revives Clinton email
suit
Send a link to a friend
[December 28, 2016]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a new
legal development on the controversy over former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton's emails, an appeals court on Tuesday reversed a lower
court ruling and said two U.S. government agencies should have done more
to recover the emails.
The ruling from Judge Stephen Williams, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit, revives one of a number of legal
challenges involving Clinton's handling of government emails when she
was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, used a private email
server housed at her New York home to handle State Department emails.
She handed over 55,000 emails to U.S. officials probing that system, but
did not release about 30,000 she said were personal and not work
related.
The email case shadowed Clinton's loss to Republican Donald Trump in the
Nov. 8 presidential election. Trump, who had repeatedly said during the
bruising campaign that if elected he would prosecute Clinton, said after
the election he had no interest in pursuing investigations into
Clinton's email use.
While the State Department and National Archives took steps to recover
the emails from Clinton's tenure, they did not ask the U.S. attorney
general to take enforcement action. Two conservative groups filed
lawsuits to force their hand.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Dec/28/images/ads/current/mcentire_sda_FLYERS_2016.png)
A district judge in January ruled the suits brought by Judicial Watch
and Cause of Action moot, saying State and the National Archives made a
"sustained effort" to recover and preserve Clinton's records.
But Williams said the two agencies should have done more, according to
the ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit. Since the agencies neither asked the attorney general for help
nor showed such enforcement action could not uncover new emails, the
case was not moot.
[to top of second column] |
![](../images/122816pics/news_c5.jpg)
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at a
ceremony to unveil a portrait honoring retiring Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. December 8,
2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_090916.png)
"The Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder -
e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the
Attorney General - might not bear more still," Williams wrote.
"Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not
shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot."
The State Department does not comment on pending litigation, a
spokesperson said.
Williams noted that Clinton used two nongovernmental email accounts
at State and continued using the Blackberry account she had while a
U.S. senator during her first weeks as the nation's U.S. diplomat.
She only switched to the email account hosted on her private server
in March 2009, the ruling said.
"Because the complaints sought recovery of emails from all of the
former Secretary’s accounts, the FBI's recovery of a server that
hosted only one account does not moot the suits, the judge wrote.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Leslie
Adler)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Dec/28/images/ads/current/pestcontrol_bch_termites.png) |