A federal appeals court has revived a pair of lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to sue former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a quest to try to recover more emails from the private server she used while secretary of state.
A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals
ruled unanimously Tuesday that a lower court judge erred when he threw out the cases as moot after the State Department received tens of thousands of emails from Clinton and more from the FBI following the criminal investigation it conducted.
Watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Cause of Action filed separate suits in 2015, asking that Secretary of State John Kerry and the head of the National Archives, Archivist David Ferriero, be required to refer the Clinton email issue to the Justice Department to consider filing a civil suit to get missing federal records back.
D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams said State's requests to Clinton and the FBI for copies of Clinton's emails were not necessarily enough to fulfill State's obligation to pursue any missing messages.
"Even though those efforts bore some fruit, 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. It is therefore abundantly clear that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants have not 'been given everything [they] asked for,'" Williams wrote in the court's opinion, joined by Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Robert Wilkins. "Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot."
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The outcome of the appeals court case may have been influenced by the timing of the arguments, which took place in early November, just after FBI Director James Comey revealed in a letter to Congress that his agency had come across more Clinton emails. They were found on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
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"While the case might well ... be moot if a referral were pointless (e.g., because no imaginable enforcement action by the Attorney General could lead to recovery of the missing emails), the record here provides no factual support for finding mootness on that basis," Williams wrote.
The appeals court ruling stops short of ordering the district court to force State to make the Federal Records Act referral to the Justice Department, leaving the possibility the cases could be dismissed on other grounds before such a directive is issued. The D.C. Circuit judges also indicated they were not taking a position on whether the attorney general would be required to sue if presented with a referral on the issue.
Williams was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Kavanaugh by President George W. Bush and Wilkins by President Barack Obama.
The judge who issued the initial decision tossing out the cases, James Boasberg, is also an Obama appointee.
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More:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...-emails-232990
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Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty
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