Appeal court revives suits over Hillary Clinton emails

A U.S. federal appeal court has revived a pair of lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to sue former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a quest to try to recover more emails from the private server she used while secretary of state.

A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Tuesday that a lower court judge erred when he threw out the cases as moot after the State Department received tens of thousands of emails from Clinton and more from the FBI following the criminal investigation it conducted.

Watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Cause of Action filed separate suits in 2015, asking that Secretary of State John Kerry and the head of the National Archives, Archivist David Ferriero, be required to refer the Clinton email issue to the Justice Department to consider filing a civil suit to get missing federal records back.

D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams said State’s requests to Clinton and the FBI for copies of Clinton’s emails were not necessarily enough to fulfill State’s obligation to pursue any missing messages.

“Even though those efforts bore some fruit, the Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder — e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General — might not bear more still. It is therefore abundantly clear that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants have not ‘been given everything [they] asked for,'” Williams wrote in the court’s opinion, joined by Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Robert Wilkins. “Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot.”

Clinton turned over about 54,000 pages of messages at State’s request in December 2014. She also instructed her aides to erase a similar quantity of emails her lawyers determined were entirely personal. In August 2015, her attorneys gave thumb drives containing copies of the work-related messages to the Justice Department.

Clinton attorney David Kendall did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Clinton and her attorneys previously have said she has no more messages to turn over, whether suits are filed or not.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which is representing State and the National Archives in the litigation, also declined to comment on the ruling.

-politico