With a little more than two months to go before voters head to the polls, Hillary Clinton could try to run out the clock on controversies surrounding her private email use and her family’s foundation.
The more than half-dozen Freedom of Information Act lawsuits pending against the State Department will expose thousands of documents related to Clinton’s time as secretary of state now that the FBI has relinquished control of roughly 14,900 emails recovered from Clinton’s private server. At least five separate congressional inquiries into activity related to Clinton’s private email use or foundation have not yet yielded answers from the Justice or State Departments.
But many of the document probes that threaten to deepen Clinton’s ethical woes are unlikely to turn up scathing evidence before November, giving the Democratic nominee an opportunity to wait out the controversies until after the election has been decided.
State Department attorneys revealed a taste of what may lie ahead Tuesday when they told a federal court that agents had identified 30 Benghazi-related emails among the records recovered by the FBI.
The government asked for a month to review the 30 new emails before releasing them— meaning Clinton may survive the first presidential debate without facing questions about the contents of the Benghazi discussions she deleted.
In some of the open records cases, the State Department has asked a judge to delay production deadlines until 2018 or beyond. In one filed by conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, in which a judge last week ordered the State Department to fast-track its review of emails, agency officials aren’t even required to estimate how long the production process will take until next month.
State Department attorneys are battling lawsuits that seek calendars from two years of Clinton’s tenure and speech schedules for her husband, which were frequently circulated among her aides. The State Department is fighting to withhold that material for as long as possible, and to redact a substantial portion of information from the pages it does produce.
However, new details related to Clinton’s private email use are ratcheting up the pressure on Clinton to address inconsistencies in her past statements sooner rather than later.
For example, she told the public, Congress and the FBI that she turned over all work-related communications months before investigators pulled thousands of official emails off her server, including the dozens now known to discuss Benghazi.
While Clinton suggested in March 2015 that she simply “chose not to keep” the roughly 30,000 emails she deemed personal in nature, lawmakers last week revealed the Democratic nominee used an anonymous deletion tool called BleachBit to destroy many of her records beyond forensic recovery.
Neither the State Department nor the FBI has specified how many deleted emails were scrubbed completely and why others were spared from BleachBit, allowing them to be salvaged by investigators.
Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist, said Clinton likely believes she can run out the clock on her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, because relatively few news outlets and organizations are pushing to unearth her records.
“She thinks she’s so far up in the polls, and Trump’s not going to get his act together, and the media is not going to dig any further,” O’Connell told the Washington Examiner.
“It’s why she went out there and gave the speech on racism,” he said of Clinton’s strategy last week amid a spate of revelations about the Clinton Foundation. “Obviously, it’s hitting a nerve.”
Clinton dedicated a campaign rally Thursday to a diatribe against Trump’s most radical followers in an attempt to tie him to the controversial “alt-right” movement.
Her speech came as emails, schedules and a set of call logs revealed the frequency with which her State Department staff consulted with Clinton Foundation executives. On some occasions, Clinton’s closest aides acted as stewards for donors’ requests for favors, access and even job opportunities.
Despite a backlash over the potential conflicts of interest contained in the new emails, Clinton largely avoided the press last week, giving interviews to CNN and MSNBC by telephone but otherwise remaining silent on the allegations.
Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, said Clinton steers clear of reporters because Trump courts them.
“I think the way the Clinton people see this thing is, Donald Trump speaks to the press all the time, and look what good it’s done to him,” Bannon said. “Everytime Trump talks, he steps into it a little deeper.”
Although Clinton has thus far resisted calls to hold a press conference after refusing to do so for nearly nine months, Bannon said he thought Clinton and her allies pushed back effectively against critics of the foundation by highlighting its good works.
“My sense of what they’re trying to do is, I think they’ve decided to take the offense on this thing,” he said. “The way they’ve decided to deal with this thing is talk about what the Clinton Foundation is doing with the money.”
Indeed, Clinton dodged questions Friday about whether her family would end its relationship with the foundation if she wins the White House by pivoting to the accomplishments the Clinton Health Access Initiative has notched in the fight against HIV.
But with few new documents to fuel the media’s appetite, Clinton’s controversies may remain small enough to leave her a clear path to victory in November.
Several of the congressional inquiries such as Sen. Chuck Grassley’s request for records related to the employment status of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff, and Sen. David Vitter’s request for records related to Clinton’s decision to keep Nigeria-based Boko Haram off the official terror list as she fostered a close friendship with a Nigerian donor — have already languished at the State Department for more than a year.
Others, such as Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s push to learn whether Clinton’s attorneys accessed classified information without the proper security clearances, were filed so recently that the administration could find a way to stall for the roughly ten weeks remaining in the election.
While records related to the Clinton Foundation are likely beyond the reach of Clinton’s critics for at least the next several months, the Democratic nominee will face more immediate wrinkles in the email saga.
Clinton received a set of 25 written questions Tuesday that will force her to confront under oath the contradictions in her explanations of the server set-up and the destruction of 30,000 emails.
What’s more, the FBI is preparing to release notes from its closed investigative file about the Clinton email network, including a summary of the interview agents conducted with her in early July. The few details that have so far emerged from that interview have proven unflattering, such as the fact that she attempted to blame her private email use on advice Colin Powell said he does not remember giving.
