http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/09/judge-denies-stays-in-2-clinton-related-email-cases-213570A federal judge has denied the government's request to halt production of records in two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking records about top aides to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a pair of orders Friday afternoon rejecting the Justice Department's motion to stay the cases brought by conservative groups Citizens United and Judicial Watch until a decision is reached on a broader motion seeking to coordinate more than 30 pending lawsuits involving emails on private accounts maintained by Clinton and her close aides.
In the Citizens United case, the group was scheduled to get by Monday all correspondence between Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin and the Clinton Foundation, the lobbying firm Teneo and various related individuals. Sullivan said there was no reason to lift that deadline agreed to in May.
"The Government agreed at the May 12, 2015 status conference that production of all relevant documents could be completed by September 13, 2015....The Government also indicated at the Status Conference that two of the four relevant searches were 'complete' the third search was expected to be completed 'in the next several days' and that the fourth search was 'ongoing," Sullivan wrote. "The Government has not expressed an inability to comply with this production schedule, a schedule it suggested and agreed to at the May 2015 status conference. In light of the imminent production deadline of September 13, 2015 and the Government's forthcoming motion for Summary Judgment...judicial economy and the interests of justice will not be served by staying this matter at this time."
The Judicial Watch suit Sullivan allowed to proceed seeks authorizations for Abedin to work for outside clients while performing work for the State Department. After serving as Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Abedin moved to a "special government employee" status and also worked with Teneo and the Clinton Foundations.
"Significant progress has been made in this case since it was reopened in June 2015. Neither judicial economy nor the interests of justice will be served by staying this matter at this time," Sullivan wrote."
Both groups had opposed efforts to halt the cases.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the development.
Citizens United President David Bossie hailed the decision on his group's suit.
"The government's attempt to stonewall and further delay the production of Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills' emails was denied by Judge Sullivan," Bossie said. "The Court saw through the government's contrived excuses and ordered the State Department to produce these documents by September 13th, the date the government's lawyers had originally proposed and agreed to. The government has run out of delay tactics and now must produce the documents Citizens United requested over a year ago."
While at least two judges had encouraged the State Department to try to bring more order to the sprawling litigation over Clinton's private email accounts and related matters, it now seems unlikely that State's belated effort to coordinate the cases will succeed.
In other Clinton email related news Friday:
—It was revealed that new State Department transparency coordinator (dare we say, czar?) Janice Jacobs received at least four emails eventually forwarded to Clinton that have been deemed classified by State. Two of the messages are from 2009 and involve efforts to secure the release of two American journalists being detained in North Korea. The other two messages are from 2010 and relate to potential donations for Haiti reconstruction.
At the time, Jacobs was assistant secretary for consular affairs. She retired last year. State announced this week that Jacobs was rejoining the department to oversee efforts to improve transparency and recordkeeping shortcomings highlighted by the unfolding saga over Clinton's private email account. Her appointment has been clouded by the disclosure that in June she gave the maximum donation to Clinton's primary campaign, $2,700.
The presence of Jacobs on the email chains may be unsurprising, but it could still be awkward for her. Some security experts are arguing that all State employees from Clinton on down had a continuous duty to look for classified information in every message they received and flag it. No one appears to have done that in the cases that have come to light thus far before the records were put into the process for release under FOIA. The messages Jacobs received were classified in recent months at the lowest tier of classification, CONFIDENTIAL, due to sensitive diplomatic and foreign government information.
Jacobs' receipt of the now-classified emails later forwarded to Clinton was first reported by the website Breitbart.com.
—The volume of records Abedin turned over to the State Department in recent weeks was also disclosed in a new court filing. On August 7, Abedin's lawyers provided 2,185 pages of material. On September 1, they forked over a PDF file comprised of 348 pages of material, and an electronic folder containing 6,714 email files, the filing said.
