On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the State and Justice departments Thursday to reopen an inquiry into whether Hillary Clinton deliberately evaded public records laws by using a private email server while she was secretary of state, and to answer whether the agencies acted in bad faith by not telling a court for months that they had asked in mid-2014 for missing emails to be returned.
“Faced with one of the gravest modern offenses to government openness,” Lamberth penned in his opinion, “(the Obama administration’s) State and Justice departments fell far short” of the legal requirements behind the Freedom of Information Act.
The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, seeking emails related to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
Both departments have spent years trying to avoid disclosure of those emails.
Judge shreds State and Justice Departments under Obama
Lamberth said the order to provide the relevant records requested was necessary to rule out “egregious government misconduct,” in the departments’ efforts to avoid disclosing them.
“At worst, career employees in the State and Justice departments colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this court,” Lamberth wrote.
Judicial Watch responds
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton expressed hope that the two federal departments under current leadership would finally be compelled to provide the documents they have been demanding.
“The historic court ruling raises concerns about the Hillary Clinton email scandal and government corruption that millions of Americans share,” Fitton said.
“Judicial Watch looks forward to conducting careful discovery into the Clinton email issue and we hope the Justice Department and State Department recognize Judge Lamberth’s criticism and help, rather than obstruct, this court-ordered discovery.”
It should be noted though, that the State Department under Trump still has Obama holdovers avoiding disclosure.
Lamberth, in October, accused State Department officials of lying and signing “clearly false” affidavits in an attempt to prevent watchdog groups from attaining information on Clinton’s private email server.
Source: The Political Insider
