Hillary Clinton's emails again under investigation

CAIRO – 7 May 2017: A federal court Friday ordered the U.S. Department of State to hand over material from former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s two emails related to the Benghazi attack, according to U.S. Judicial Watch.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected the state department’s justification that such material should be held back under exemption of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Clinton’s emails which aroused suspicion had the subject line “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt” and were sent following the attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya in September 2012. Four American diplomats were killed in the attack.

Judicial Watch, an American watchdog group, has sued the State Department for complete access to the emails which the State Department had previously withheld under the so-called "deliberative process" exemption policy.

The State Department tried to dissuade the decision to reopen the email investigation case. The Department tried to make the case that the emails should have been classified but due to a bureaucratic lapse, they had failed to do so.

The Department of Justice asked the court to keep the emails secret and argued that they accidentally leaked the emails because it contains classified material, but Judge Jackson ordered the release after reviewing the records.

The officiating judicial officer, Judge Jackson, was not convinced. Instead, he argued that the bureaucratic lapse was not accidental but a conscious cover-up for Clinton.

Judicial Watch believes the redaction of the emails was not a mistake, claiming the State Department was trying to protect Clinton and the agency by holding back materials from Clinton's unofficial email server.

Perhaps surprisingly, U.S. President Donald Trump's new administration seems unresponsive to the Clinton email case, after he had previously chastised Clinton during his election campaign, accusing her of violating the law by using her personal email to address foreign officials.