A federal judge rejected the State Department’s latest attempt to delay the production of e-mails from top Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills on Tuesday, voicing his frustration with the government’s excuse that a computer search of the documents could take months.
“How long does it take you to run a computer search?” DC District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan asked State Department lawyers. “You press a button. It’s computer-driven. No one’s reading this line-by-line.”
The hearing was the latest in a protracted public-records lawsuit brought by conservative group Citizens United against the State Department for its failure to produce the documents. Department officials had set a September 13 deadline to turn over all the e-mails, but informed Citizens United and the court on September 3 that they would not make that deadline.
“When the government set a date for production of all documents on September 13, we took them at their word,” said Citizens United lawyer Matthew McGill. “So did I,” Judge Sullivan agreed.
The Department was back before the court on Tuesday to push for an extension to December 9 — a “hope date” that government lawyers warned may prove overly ambitious.
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“The State Department is being crushed with obligations,” an attorney for the government argued, pointing to a glut of Freedom of Information Act requests submitted since news of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server broke in March. “People are working enormous hours. I mean, you know, really demoralizing, crushing hours. Weekends, nights.”
Sullivan scoffed at the excuse. “We work weekends and nights,” he said. “I mean, everyone works hard.”
#share#Instead of December 9, the judge gave the State Department until the end of the week to upload all the relevant documents, and ordered the agency to complete a computer search for the relevant terms by October 2. The government will be hauled back before the court for a status report on October 6.
“The public is clamoring for information, everyone’s clamoring for information,” Sullivan told State Department lawyers. “This needs to be resolved as soon as possible. . . . Maybe this is a case where we really do have to allocate some more resources, because of all the noise the public is making for information that the public may be entitled to.”
#related#The Citizens United request pertains to all government e-mails sent from Abedin and Mills to Clinton Foundation e-mail addresses and, in Abedin’s case, consulting firm Teneo, where she worked while still employed as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department. Concerned about possible conflicts of interest, Iowa Republican senator Chuck Grassley has spent more than two years seeking the same e-mails. Earlier this summer, however, he said State officials weren’t even returning his office’s phone calls.
“I absolutely think the State Department, and people within the State Department, are purposely and strategically withholding documents,” Citizens United president David Bossie told reporters after the court hearing. “They want to buy time. The former secretary of state is running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. And I think that her friends and allies within the State Department are making sure they are helping her at every turn.”
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.