A federal judge has ordered the State Department to begin delivering some emails uncovered by the FBI in its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server by September 13.
The order is limited to documents related to the Benghazi attacks and the State Department notes that it’s possible that it may not find any relevant documents. But the decision from U.S. District Court Judge William P. Dimitriouleas’ hands a victory to conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, which is pushing for the expedited release of the emails with the clock ticking down to Election Day.
The order will likely push up the release of some of the 14,900 new documents that the FBI turned over to the State Department. In a separate case filed by Judicial Watch, another federal judge asked the State Department Monday to provide a plan for releasing them by September 23.
“As we have said, the department agreed to search the materials we received from the FBI in response to several pending (Freedom of Information Act) requests and, to the extent responsive records are identified, produce them,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said Thursday. “Using broad search terms, we have identified a number of documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request. At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive. We also have not determined if they involve Secretary Clinton.”
Clinton has faced increased scrutiny over her use of a private email server and new revelations of the close workings between her State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
