The election may be over, but the fight for access to some of Hillary Clinton’s emails goes on.
The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch goes back to federal court on Tuesday seeking emails and texts the FBI says they have discovered on a backup server, but the bureau also says it will take them two years to release the 35 documents they’ve located.
The upshot of the hearing, however, will likely be less about whether the documents should be turned over, and instead be about whether the FBI can take two years to do it.
As is now famously known, Clinton established and maintained her own data server to handle her email while serving as secretary of state, and soon after leaving that office outsourced the maintenance of the server to a small tech firm in Denver called Platte River Networks. Platte River was using a company named “Datto” to back up the data on the Clinton server, and during a court hearing in late January, the FBI identified new documents they discovered on the Datto server.
The document cache could also contain FBI-produced documents that concern the backup server device. Roughly 10,000 other emails the FBI discovered on the Datto backup were turned over to the State Department, and those emails are expected to be released later.
Judicial Watch was a leading source in identifying problems with Clinton’s email logistics during her tenure at the State Department, and since then has pushed the boundaries of the Freedom of Information Act through numerous lawsuits.
