The FBI has recovered 30 emails from Hillary Clinton’s server that may be related to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, the State Department has revealed. Government lawyers requested a month to review the emails before releasing them.
"Using broad search terms, we have identified approximately 30 documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Tuesday. "At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive, or whether they are duplicates of materials already provided to the Department by former Secretary Clinton in December 2014.”
The department’s lawyers told US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta that some of the 30 emails were not among the 55,000 emails that the Democratic presidential nominee handed over to the investigation.
They told Judge Mehta that the department needs until the end of September to review and redact classified information that might be in those emails. However, the judge was not satisfied with the request, specifically with the timing. Mehta pressed the State Department, ordering its lawyers to report in a week on why the Obama administration would need a month to review the emails.
Donald Trump’s campaign could not help but seize the opportunity to question Clinton’s true intention.
"Today's disclosure that 30 additional emails about Benghazi were discovered on Hillary Clinton's private server raises additional questions about the more than 30,000 emails she deleted,” Trump’s senior communications adviser, Jason Miller, said in a statement. “Hillary Clinton swore before a federal court and told the American people she handed over all of her work-related emails. If Clinton did not consider emails about something as important as Benghazi to be work-related, one has to wonder what is contained in the other emails she attempted to wipe from her server."
The Tuesday hearing was just one of several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by a conservative group Judicial Watch. The 30 recovered emails in question are a tiny part of to nearly 15,000 never-seen emails obtained by the FBI.
The foundation has been seeking to release 14,900 emails, all of which were found on one computer disc. Clinton handed over around 30,000 “work-related” emails from her private server in 2014, but omitted nearly as much, deeming them personal.
Last week, House Oversight Committee member Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina) told Fox News that Clinton permanently deleted thousands of emails from her private email server using software called BleachBit.
However, the FBI managed to get around the software and recover nearly a half of what Clinton’s team deleted.
Last week, a judge ordered the State Department to begin releasing 14,900 deleted emails uncovered by the FBI by September 13.
Corresponding with the Tuesday hearing, Judicial Watch submitted 25 questions to Clinton about her 2009 decision to use her home-brewed server in the basement of her New York house rather than the State Department’s one.
Earlier in August, US District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Clinton to answer the questions “by no later than thirty days thereafter.”
“These are simple questions about her email system that we hope will finally result in straight-forward answers, under oath, from Hillary Clinton,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
On Wednesday, the FBI is expected to release the report it provided to the Justice Department in July as well as notes, called a 302 form, which contain Clinton’s interview regarding the investigation into her private email server.