September 26, 2016 | No Comments
A potential compromise is in the works that could result in more of Hillary Clinton emails recovered by the FBI being made public before the election.
Last week, a judge ordered the processing under the Freedom of Information Act of a relatively meager 1,050 pages of the FBI-found emails before Election Day. Government lawyers say there are about 5,600 Clinton, work-related emails the FBI turned over to State Department beginning in July, although some are duplicates of records already processed and released.
However, during a court hearing in a separate FOIA lawsuit Monday, another judge pushed for a deal that could accelerate the release of those messages, perhaps three-fold in advance of the election.
Acting on a case brought by Vice News journalist Jason Leopold, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras ordered the two sides to try to work out a compromise to devote more of State’s resources to processing Clinton’s emails in the coming weeks, rather than other records Leopold has requested.
Ryan James, an attorney for Leopold, said that if it was “not possible” for State to allocate more resources to the Clinton email disclosure, Leopold would be “willing to sacrifice” pages he’s due of other Clinton-related records in order to get more of the emails released. About 2,200 pages of assorted records are scheduled for processing in the coming month in Leopold’s case.
Speaking of the FBI-recovered emails, James said: “We believe those records are more important.”
Initially, Justice Department attorney Robert Prince did not sound terribly receptive to the proposal. He said the email-focused part of Leopold’s suit against the State Department doesn’t even encompass the full set of FBI-provided emails, and that Leopold previously agreed to limit the Clinton email-related portion of his suit to the roughly 54,000 pages of emails Clinton turned over on paper in December 2014.
The Vice News reporter initially submitted a very broad request for almost every Clinton-related record at State, but later agreed to narrow it to Clinton emails, as well as other records on specific topics.
But Contreras said it would be odd to penalize Leopold for not having foreseen that some emails would be obtained by the FBI.
“No one knew these documents existed….and these documents should have been in the 55,000,” the judge said.
Prince said the fact they weren’t in the roughly 54,000 pages of emails Clinton turned over did not necessarily reflect any impropriety. And there might be valid reasons these emails weren’t in that set, he argued.
“Just because Secretary Clinton deleted an email does not mean anything untoward happened here,” Prince said, noting that federal employees are generally not obliged to save all emails, even those that are-work related.
“I’m not suggesting that,” Contreras replied.
However, the judge said he believed both sides could work out a compromise that would reallocate some of State’s resources to the Clinton email project.
“It seems to me that if the two of you actually spoke to each other, you could reach some agreement,” Contreras said. “I’m not going to order that everything be produced by Election Day. That’s just impossible.”
The judge called a recess in the hearing and ordered the two sides to confer about a possible arrangement. After a half-hour break, Prince returned to the courtroom shortly before noon to say Justice Department and State Department lawyers handling the case were open to a re-allocation of resources, but needed approval from a State Department FOIA official who could not immediately be reached, Eric Stein.
Both sides said they were optimistic that a deal could be worked out, perhaps even before a hearing scheduled Monday afternoon in another suit where Leopold is seeking Clinton email-related records directly from the FBI. That case is before yet another judge, further complicating the situation.
Leopold’s lawyer mounted a last-minute bid during the morning hearing to try to get any additional emails that may be released sent “directly” to the Vice News reporter through his attorney, apparently in lieu of them being made public on State’s website. The request echoed a debate among transparency advocates about whether records the government discloses should be immediately released to all via the internet, or sent to the requester some time before everyone else gets them.
Contreras turned down James’ request that Leopold have first dibs on any additional emails.
“I’m happy with them posting it on the website. FOIA is about informing the public what their government is up to and that means everybody,” the judge said.