A federal appeals court on Friday rejected an order that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her former chief of staff were sitting in front of a private depot over her use of a private e-mail server for government work when she served as the top diplomat. nation.
A district court in March had conservative watchdog Judicial Watch approve his request to dismiss both Clinton and former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills on issues related to the use of a server.
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The case stemmed from a request from the Freedom of Information (FOIA) of Judicial Watch to the State Department. Clinton has argued that she has already answered questions about the controversy and that this should not be done again – the case did not result in a charge for the then presidential candidate in 2016 after a high-profile investigation – but DC District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in his statement that their answers to the past left much to be desired.
Judicial Watch had asked Clinton and Mills to inquire about the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, but was limited to questions related to their knowledge of the existence of emails and documents related to the attack.
Judicial Watch, which initiated the case in 2014, is seeking information on the question of whether Clinton used her private email server to intentionally circumvent the Freedom of Information Act, or whether the State Department acted in bad faith when they tried to settle the case years ago, and whether the department had sufficiently searched for records in response to Judicial Watch’s first FOIA request.
Clinton and Mills sued the appeals court to prevent the downturn, and it was declared 3-0 by the court.
The appellate court accused the district court of having abused its discretion, and had used suspicion of mistrust by the government to open the door to what the appeals court described as “far-fetched”.
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“The mere suspicion of mistrust of the government cannot be used as a dragnet to authorize powerful discovery that it is irrelevant to the remaining problems in a case,” the ruling said.
The initial case focused on Benghazi, and expanded with the discovery of Clinton’s private email server in 2015.
The court notes that the declines were directed at the server and its understanding of records management was not related to the initial issue in the FOIA – that was whether the state department had conducted an adequate search in connection with interview points to ambassador Susan Rice as she went after the attack on Sunday shows.
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Rice said at the time that the attack was inspired by an anti-Islamic YouTube video, but that turned out to be false.
“The District Court has ballooned irresponsibly about the scope of its investigation into allegations of mistrust to cover up an ongoing probe by Secretary of State Clinton into actions taken years before the on-site searches were conducted by the Department of state, “the statement said.
Fox News’ Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.
