Clinton Answers Questions in Email Lawsuit, Doesn’t Recall Being Warned About Violating Laws
Hillary Clinton has answered questions under penalty of perjury in a lawsuit over her emails. The FOIA lawsuit was filed by the group Judicial Watch with a series of questions they wanted Clinton to answer about her server and when she was aware of certain things.
Politico obtained the legal filing from Clinton’s lawyers, and you’ll notice a pattern in there of Clinton objecting quite a bit to many of the questions being posed (and some of the definitions used). For example:
1. Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and when it became operational.
Response: Secretary Clinton objects to Interrogatory No. 1 as outside the scope of permitted discovery. The clintonemail.com system, as that term is defined in the Instructions and subject to Secretary Clinton’s objection to that definition, consisted of equipment set up to host e-mail for President Clinton’s staff. Information regarding the creation of that system, including the reasons for its creation, is irrelevant to this lawsuit and outside the scope of permitted discovery.
In response to a question about when she set up the account and who did it, Clinton said, “Although Secretary Clinton does not have specific knowledge of the details of the account’s creation, her best understanding is that one of President Clinton’s aides, Justin Cooper, set up the account. She decided to use a clintonemail.com account for the purpose of convenience.”
Cooper has been a longtime aide to the former president and worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology when he was in office.
And like in her FBI interview, there were simply things she just cannot recall, like “any specific consultations” regarding her decision to use personal email while she was Secretary of State.
Oh, and she doesn’t recall being warned about potential risks either:
Subject to the foregoing objection, Secretary Clinton states that she does not recall participating in any communications before or during her tenure as Secretary of State concerning or relating to her decision to use a clintonemail.com account to conduct official State Department business…
Secretary Clinton states that she does not recall being advised, cautioned, or warned, she does not recall that it was ever suggested to her, and she does not recall participating in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed that her use of a clintonemail.com e-mail account to conduct official State Department business conflicted with or violated federal recordkeeping laws.
Clinton says she understood her email was subject to FOIA requests but objected to a question about how she managed and preserved emails. (They write, “The word ‘manage’ is vague.”)
Judicial Watch also wanted to know how Clinton could continue to use personal email after telling State Department employees to avoid conducting official business on personal accounts. Clinton’s legal team objected and said the question “mischaracterizes” her as the sender of the memo in question:
During Secretary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, all cables originating from Main State ended with the name “CLINTON.” The presence of Secretary Clinton’s name at the end of the cable was a formality, and it did not mean that she sent, authored, or reviewed the cable.
They also insist that “Secretary Clinton states that she does not recall altering, destroying, disclosing, or using any e-mails related to official State Department business from her tenure as Secretary of State in her clintonemail.com account or instructing anyone else to do so after she left office and before her attorneys reviewed the e-mails in her clintonemail.com email account in response to the State Department’s request.”
[image via screengrab]
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