FBI uncovers 15,000 more documents in Clinton email probe
The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 15,000 more documents from her time as secretary of state that were not previously disclosed by her attorneys. The State Department is expected to discuss when and how it will release the emails Monday morning in federal court.
The total — confirmed by the Justice Department — was disclosed by a conservative legal group after the State Department said last week that it would hand over the emails. The number to be released is nearly 50 percent more than the 30,000-plus that Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.
Lawyers for the State Department and Judicial Watch, the legal group, said in an Aug. 12 court filing that they intended to negotiate a plan for the release, part of a civil public records lawsuit before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington.
“It looks like the State Department is trying to slow-roll the release of the records,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an interview Monday morning. “They’ve had them for at least a month, and we still don’t know when we’re going to get them.”
According to Fitton, lawyers for the government said they plan to set a rolling release schedule in October, weeks before November’s general election.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on pending litigation. A State Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in May 2015 after disclosures that Clinton had exclusively used a personal email server while secretary from 2009 to 2013. Judicial Watch had sought all emails sent or received by Clinton at the State Department in a request made under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which covers the release of public records.
Monday’s hearing comes seven weeks after the Justice Department on July 7 closed a criminal investigation without charges into the handling of classified material in Clinton’s email setup, which FBI Director James B. Comey called “extremely careless.”
The FBI on Aug. 5 completed transferring all of what Comey said were tens of thousands of previously undisclosed work-related Clinton emails that the FBI found in its investigation for the State Department to review and make public. Government lawyers until now have given no details about how many emails the FBI found or when the full set would be released. It is unclear how many of the 15,000 or so documents might be attachments, duplicates or exempt from release for legal reasons.
Government lawyers disclosed last week that the FBI turned over six computer discs of information: one including emails and attachments that were sent directly to or from Clinton, or to or from her at some point in an email chain, and not previously turned over by her lawyers; a second with classified documents; another with emails returned by Clinton; and three containing materials from other individuals retrieved by the FBI.
The roughly 15,000 documents at issue now come from the first disc, Fitton said.
In announcing the FBI’s findings July 5, Comey said investigators found no evidence that the emails it found “were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.” Like many users, Clinton periodically deleted emails or they were purged when devices were changed.
Clinton’s lawyers also may have deleted some of the emails as “personal,” Comey said, noting their review relied on header information and search terms, not a line-by-line reading as the FBI conducted.
