In a case barely mentioned by the mainstream media, attorneys representing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills attended a telehearing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on June 2nd, 2020. Clinton lost the appeal to a March 2nd order that required she and Mills testify regarding emails about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed in an attack on an American diplomatic compound.
When initially ordered to appear in March, Clinton filed a mandamus position. This position gives Clinton the “indisputable right”, as described by her attorneys, to not appear in court.
“We know what the issues are, and the court wants specific questions answered, but now she's seeking this extraordinary emergency intervention to stop us,” said Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch.
During her 2016 run for President, Clinton acknowledged that she maintained and exchanged emails on a private server during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State. This practice led to an FBI investigation. Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group that promotes high standards of ethics and morality in politics, government, and law, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit after unearthing over 750 pages of emails from Clinton’s private server previously discovered by the FBI. These emails included correspondence between Clinton and Washington officials, military officials, and company chairmen. Also discovered were communications with former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, who sent classified information on the unsecured server between 2009 and 2011, according to Judicial Watch. Clinton’s secretaries forwarded her daily itinerary to her, via the server on five separate occasions.
During the telehearing on June 2nd, U.S. Court Judge Royce Lamberth indicated the court was not confident that the State had access to all of the appropriate messages recovered by the FBI. Since the “state department continues to produce new emails,” he said, “there may be undisclosed text messages as well”. David Kendall, Clinton’s attorney, argued that Clinton and Mills have already disclosed tens of thousands of emails and messages, and have no further information to surrender. All of Clinton’s existing cell phones, he said, were given to the FBI in 2015, and none of the phones contained any documents. The case, Kendall said, “is moot”. Judges went on to state that Clinton and Mills’ testimony might be able to help clarify how the State Department could broaden their search for information. However, Kendall argued that “the real purpose of the depositions is harassment” of Clinton and her officials, their appearance in court will be used to provide “video footage” for “partisan, political attack ads”.
In an upcoming testimonial in September, Judicial Watch will seek to ask why Clinton deleted 33,000 emails from her private server and what they contained. Though she claimed such emails were “personal”, the FBI recovered 17,000 “work-related” messages for review. Clinton and Mills will not be questioned about motives for actions after Benghazi, the court says, but they “may be questioned about their knowledge of the existence of any emails, documents, or text messages related to the Benghazi attack”.
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