Judicial Watch Gets a Hearing in Its Effort to See the Abedin Laptop Emails

Ronald Reagan once uttered the famous phrase “Trust, but verify.”

So when the FBI announced just before the 2016 presidential election that it found emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server on an unsecured laptop owned by former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and his wife—and Clinton deputy chief of staff—Huma Abedin, it said no new information was found. Judicial Watch just wanted to verify that was correct.

Those emails were reportedly handed over the Department of State, which is already subject to a judge’s order to hand over emails—but has been doing so at a snail’s pace. There are seven disks of documents, but it’s still releasing just 500 at a time, monthly, from the first disk.

At this pace, it could take years to find out what the public should have already known months ago.

Judicial Watch released the following statement about its case:

Judicial Watch today announced a hearing will be held Tuesday, March 7, 2017, regarding Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails that were sent or received during her tenure from February 2009 to January 31, 2013, as well as all emails by other State Department employees to Clinton regarding her non-‘state.gov’ email address (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)). The case is before Judge James E. Boasberg.

Items of discussion at the hearing will be the emails of Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, Abedin’s estranged husband. Judicial Watch also will be seeking answers as to the timing of the release of Clinton’s emails that were recovered by the FBI in its investigation of the server used by Clinton and others.

The State Department has previously been ordered to produce documents to Judicial Watch, and is currently processing 500 pages per month from disk one of seven available disks. At the upcoming hearing, the State Department must address the number of documents subject to FOIA on the remaining disks.

This new hearing will begin a 9:30 a.m. EST at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It will be the first time Judicial Watch will go head-to-head with the Jeff Sessions-run Department of Justice. The original lawsuit that this hearing relates to was initiated in May of 2015. {eoa}