Watchdogs Win Victory in Bid for FBI Records Related to Hillary Email Probe

A pair of watchdog groups on Thursday won a legal victory in their quest to recover emails that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deleted from her early weeks in office in 2009.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to produce an unredacted version of an FBI agent’s declaration describing what the agency did in its attempt to recover emails Clinton sent and received on a pair of Blackberry devices between January 21 and March 18 of that year.

Lawyers representing the State Department provided the full version to the judge but argued that plaintiffs Judicial Watch and Cause of Action Institute were not entitled to those details. The judge disagreed since most of the details have already been made public. He made one exception, the identity of the email service provider Clinton used.

Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, expressed frustration that President Donald Trump’s administration has taken the same position as former President Barack Obama’s.

“We’re happy with the ruling, but it is unbelievable we’re being opposed by Trump appointees in the State and Justice Departments on the Clinton email issue,” he said in a statement. “President Trump ought to be outraged his appointees are protecting Hillary Clinton. The State Department should initiate action with the Justice Department — and both agencies should finally take the necessary steps to recover all the government emails Hillary Clinton unlawfully removed.”

Clinton’s use of private email — stored on a private server in her suburban New York home — led to a criminal investigation that dogged her presidential campaign. The criminal probe ended last year when then-FBI Director James Comey announced that no reasonable prosecutor would seek charges in such a case.

But Judicial Watch has been trying for months to obtain those communications and has won court orders instructing the State Department to turn over Clinton’s emails. It filed this lawsuit in May 2015 arguing that the government had a duty under the Federal Records Act to preserve the emails and recover those that had been deleted.

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Boasberg initially threw out the suit, but the D.C. Court of Appeals reversed him, maintaining that the FBI may have secured the emails as part of its criminal probe. The FBI agent’s declaration maintains that the agency “undertook all reasonable and comprehensive efforts” to recover the emails.

“Not surprisingly, Plaintiffs are loath to take the Government’s word for it,” the judge wrote.

The FBI declaration provided information detailing those efforts to the judge, but the government argued those details should remain secret to the plaintiffs and the public.

Other than the undisclosed identity of the email provider, Boasberg wrote, “The Court confirms that disclosure thereof would imperil little other secret information.”