Posted on 11/13/2015 4:49:20 PM PST by markomalley
A federal judge on Friday sided with the State Department against a conservative legal advocacy group trying to speed up the government's release of some Hillary Clinton emails.
Judge Amit Mehta said that it would be “unwise and potentially risky” to order the government to quickly release some of the 329 emails specifically related to the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, which it had recently discovered.
Those emails — along with tens of thousands of others — are already on pace to be released by next February, as a result of a separate lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, said Mehta, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was appointed by President Obama.
The best solution would be “to keep this on course,” Mehta said, since the government has already “made concrete commitments” in the other case.
The decision is a blow to Judicial Watch, the right-leaning legal group that has filed 20 lawsuits over the Clinton emails.
Judicial Watch had asked for the Benghazi-related emails to be pulled out of that larger tranche and given special attention.
“This is just continued delay,” argued Judicial Watch lawyer Ramona Cotca, who complained that the “case has been pending for months.”
The decision also underscores the deeply tangled web of legal cases surrounding Clinton's emails, which have become a headache for the State Department as well as a drag on her presidential campaign.
At issue were 242 emails to or from Clinton in 2012 that relate to the Benghazi attack, which the State Department had found during a second search in response to Judicial Watch's request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Many of those emails had not yet been disclosed to Congress, Judicial Watch said, and might have remained buried were it not for their lawsuit.
One email that has been made public was sent by Clinton to her daughter, Chelsea, claiming that an “an al Qaeda-like group” was responsible for the Benghazi attack, which killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Republican lawmakers unveiled that message during a marathon 11-hour hearing with Clinton in the Select Committee on Benghazi last month, and claimed that it was proof that Clinton had one message for her family and another for the American public. The Obama administration’s initial public explanation about the attacks was that it was related to an anti-Muslim YouTube video that had sparked protests in other parts of the globe.
That email came to light when the department responded to the Judicial Watch case, said group president Tom Fitton.
“The only way they had that Sept. 11 smoking gun is become of this FOIA case,” he told reporters after the Friday morning court hearing. “So who the heck knows what else is out there.”
In addition to the 242 emails from 2012, Judicial Watch is also trying to force into the light 87 emails that Clinton sent in January of 2013 — her last month of work at the State Department — which were never subpoenaed by the House Benghazi committee.
Government lawyer Robert Prince claimed that there was already “a very complicated process” for releasing the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton had marked as work-related — including the new emails specifically focusing on Benghazi. That process includes a lengthy series of reviews, he said, to make sure no classified or sensitive material is released.
“All of these emails are somewhere in the process,” he said.
Forcing the government to pull some emails out of that review would be an “enormous administrative undertaking,” he insisted.
Later on Friday morning, another federal judge weighed in on a separate Judicial Watch public records case, involving Clinton’s unusual “home-brew” email setup.
The State Department has identified 16,900 pages of possible records that may be suited for release in that case, it said, and was slowly making its way through reviewing them.
Judicial Watch seemed satisfied with the progress in that case.
“Things seems to be moving along fairly well,” Judicial Watch lawyer Lauren Burke said.
Judge Amit P. Mehta was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on December 22, 2014. Born in Patan, India, Judge Mehta received his B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Georgetown University in 1993 and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1997.
After law school, Judge Mehta worked in the San Francisco office of the law firm Latham & Watkins LLP before clerking for the Honorable Susan P. Graber of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Judge Mehta worked at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Zuckerman Spaeder LLP from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, Judge Mehta joined the District of Columbia Public Defender Service as a staff attorney. Judge Mehta returned to Zuckerman Spaeder in 2007, where his practice focused on white-collar criminal defense, complex business disputes, and appellate advocacy.
Judge Mehta served on the Board of Directors of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and is the former co-chair of the District of Columbia Bar’s Criminal Law and Individual Rights Section Steering Committee. He is also a former Director of Facilitating Leadership in Youth, a non-profit organization dedicated to after-school activities and mentoring for at-risk youth.
Judge Mehta lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and two children.
No possible bias here, is there?
I would like to say that I’m surprised, but I can’t because I’m not anymore. We used to laugh at Mexico and Haiti for crooked governments and one type of law for the rich alone.
A judge of TROP..
Another Harry Reid shake-and-bake judge.
...and the judge said, “blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, Hillary is good, Hillary is innocent, blah, blah, blah blah blah.”
That quote is taken directly from the heavily-nuanced, Democrat book of eternal wisdom.
/s/
IMHO
Somebody skipped an afternoon shopping at Macy’s and instead went judge shopping. Who would’ve thunk?
I predicted that her royal hipness would be absolved of all sin.
If Americans don’t want to be run by leftists, they should stop giving them power just to say “We won” like their elections were a football game.
Ha! A woman I know is trying to get records concerning the death of her husband from the VA under FOIA and it’s been a year. As for the emails. The FBI needs everything. They’ll only do what the executive branch wants though. Gowdy needs it all but we don’t need the top secret stuff.
If Obama had been President when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the public wouldn't have been told that the Japanese were the attackers until at least 1946.
More than three years since the Benghazi attack and the cover-up and stonewalling continue.
If Obama had been President when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the public wouldn’t have been told that the Japanese were the attackers until at least 1946.
_____________________________________________________
No, they would have blamed the Japanese attack on an 8mm home movie that was offensive to Hirohito and that we had it coming.
I’d rather they be released in February then during the Thanksgiving-New Year’s timeframe when nobody cares. The judge inadvertently did us a favor. We really should be thankful to her.
Are you sh*ttin' me? Is this how far America has fallen?
Her and her wig are done
I agree, that’s the first thing I thought. The closer to the election, the better.
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