Here Are 3 New Email Headaches for Hillary Clinton

The Hillary Clinton scandal counter continued to tick up Friday morning with three new headaches developing for the Democratic presidential nominee.

These are unlikely to be the last problems to develop related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Let’s take a look at each one, in chronological order:

BleachBit

According to U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the “Form 302” notes that FBI investigators took during their probe of Clinton’s private email server indicate open-source software called BleachBit was used to remove “tens of thousands of emails” from her server. The congressman said the use of the software suggests the deletions were far from innocuous, and were perhaps to hide even more damaging information than has already been revealed.

According to the BleachBit website, the software “quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy” by freeing cache space, deleting cookies, clearing Internet history, “shredding” temporary files, deleting logs, and discarding “junk you didn’t know was there.”

“Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean a thousand applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and more,” it states. “Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster.”

Benghazi Emails Not Handed Over

Among the 14,900 emails discovered during the FBI investigation that hadn’t been handed over to the State Department by Clinton’s attorneys were several related to Benghazi. Judicial Watch said the admission was made by government employees at a hearing on Tuesday:

Judicial Watch has been seeking Clinton’s communications about the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, during which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith were killed. A second assault targeted a nearby compound, killing two government contractors, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

After admitting in an August 23 court filing that it found documents that “satisfied the [Benghazi related] search terms” of the new Clinton emails, the State Department proposed a rolling production schedule, “under which State would make its first production of any non-exempt responsive records subject to FOIA on September 30, 2016, and complete production no later than October 31, 2016.” Judicial Watch then asked the court that State make known the volume of documents remaining to be reviewed before it accepts whether the production schedule is reasonable.

Today, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta informed the attorneys the Court wants to schedule a hearing on this issue for Tuesday, August 30.

Order to Produce Documents

Separately, a federal court has ordered the State Department to review newly found Clinton emails and turn over “responsive records” to Judicial Watch by no later than September 13. The government watchdog explained the new development in an official statement:

The first batch of new emails comes in response to a court order issued today in a November 13, 2015, Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed against the Department of State seeking all communications between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House from the day of the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and throughout the following week. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Dr. Larry Kawa of Boca Raton, Florida, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach Division.

Today’s order requiring the production of the emails from the 14,900 new Clinton emails as well as any other communications or emails from the other materials recently delivered to the State Department by the FBI was issued by U.S. District Court Judge William P. Dimitrouleas. The court ruled:

The State Department shall search the material, determine whether any responsive records exist, and complete its first production of non-exempt records, to the extent any exist, by September 13, 2016.