[LAW NEWZ] Just when you thought that the Hillary Clinton email saga was over, a new development surfaced on Tuesday by way of a federal appellate judge’s ruling. Judge Stephen Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of conservative groups Judicial Watch and Cause of Action in their lawsuits against the State Department over whether or not enough was done to try to restore Clinton’s missing emails. After it looked like the lawsuits had been squashed, the appeals court revived them.
In January, a District Court judge had thrown out the lawsuits with the reasoning that both the State Department and National Archives had put in a "sustained effort" to recover the emails. In his ruling Williams wrote that this wasn’t enough. "The Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder ‐ e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General ‐ might not bear more still," he said. "Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot."
As a result, Williams feels that it’s "abundantly clear that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, [Judicial Watch has] not ’been given everything [they] asked for.’" |