Trump Hammers Clinton for New Benghazi Emails

Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday seized on revelations that the FBI has recovered an additional 30 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server possibly related to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, saying the discovery makes one wonder “what is contained in the other emails she attempted to wipe from her server.”

Article by Louis Nelson

The 30 emails were part of a larger cache of roughly 15,000 emails the FBI recovered as it probed Clinton’s use of a personal email server for State Department business, according to an Associated Press report.

State Department lawyers told a U.S. district judge that some of the possibly-Benghazi-related emails were not part of the trove of emails Clinton handed over to the State Department after leaving the agency in 2013, before the FBI started its investigation.

“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 revelation of potentially newly discovered Benghazi emails adds to the migraine the Clinton camp has suffered throughout her presidential campaign, as new developments keep the scandal in the headlines.

Tuesday’s hearing also delved into when the State Department would be able to publicly release the thousands of emails the FBI recovered as part of its now-closed investigation, which could come uncomfortably close to the election.

State contended that it will take until the end of next month to complete the review and redact classified information before the emails can be released publicly. State Department spokesman John Kirby also said that review would determine whether the emails are, in fact, related to the Benghazi terrorist attack or are instead duplicates of emails already turned over by Clinton.

“As we have said, the Department agreed to search the materials we received from the FBI in response to several pending FOIA requests and, to the extent responsive records are identified, produce them,” Kirby said. “Using broad search terms, we have identified approximately 30 documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request. 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.”

Information about the previously undisclosed Benghazi emails came during a court hearing for a case brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has filed multiple lawsuits concerning Clinton’s records from her time as secretary of state.

Separately, Judicial Watch posted on its website a set of 25 questions that it had submitted for Clinton to answer, after a different U.S. district court judge ordered the former secretary of state to respond to the group’s outstanding inquiries under oath in writing by Sept. 29. The questions seek specific answers about the creation of her personal email server and account, her decision to use it for State Department business and her awareness of how it related to federal freedom of information laws.

The questions range from general and broad to specific, asking Clinton about particular memos and meetings she held while secretary of state in which the use of private email servers was discussed.

“These are simple questions about her email system that we hope will finally result in straight-forward answers, under oath, from Hillary Clinton,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement that accompanied the release of the questions.

The new batch of emails being reviewed by the State Department is not the only news expected soon related to Clinton’s email server. The FBI is expected to release, as soon as Wednesday, the report it issued to the Justice Department recommending against charges for Clinton following the bureau’s investigation into her email practices while with the State Department. That release is also expected to contain the FBI’s agent notes, called a 302 form, from Clinton’s interview last month at the bureau’s downtown Washington offices.

It is the second straight week that Clinton’s emails as secretary of state have put her presidential campaign on the defensive. A set of emails released a week ago by Judicial Watch showed that donors to the Clinton Foundation were given access to high-level State Department officials during her four-year tenure.

Trump has hammered his Democratic opponent over the emails, which he said represented evidence that Clinton had instituted a “pay for play” scheme at the State Department. But the former secretary of state denied that the emails showed anything improper and said in an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week that she was “sure” nothing from her emails or ties to the Clinton Foundation would damage her election chances.

“My work as secretary of state was not influenced by outside sources. I made policy decisions based on what I thought to keep Americans safe and protect our interests abroad,” Clinton told “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski. “I believe my aides also acted appropriately. And we have gone above and beyond most of the charities that I understand, beyond legal requirements, beyond standards to voluntarily disclose donors and also to reduce sources of funding that raised questions — not that we thought they were necessarily legitimate, but to avoid those questions.”

Read more at: politico.com