Politics

Judicial Watch: Hillary Clinton Withheld Or Deleted Benghazi Related Documents

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Among the 14,900 federal documents Hillary Clinton is said to have failed to turn over to the State Department in 2014 are some related to the Benghazi attacks, according to Judicial Watch.

The conservative watchdog group says that government lawyers admitted in court papers filed on Tuesday that the nearly 15,000 pages of Clinton records recovered by the FBI included some which “satisfied the [Benghazi-related] search terms.”

That suggests that Clinton withheld or deleted records which referred to the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks which left four Americans dead.

Clinton has claimed that a team of her aides searched through her email account using search terms for a variety of issues, including Benghazi.

And though Clinton has claimed that she turned over all of her work-related records, the FBI says that a forensic sweep of Clinton’s server led to the recovery of nearly 15,000 more documents. It is unclear if all of the documents were emails maintained on Clinton’s server or if they resided somewhere else.

The bureau transferred the recovered documents to the State Department on Aug. 5.

Amit P. Mehta, the federal judge overseeing the Judicial Watch lawsuit, ordered the State Department to begin releasing Benghazi-related records to the watchdog group by Sept. 30. All of the documents must be produced by Oct. 31, several days before the general election. A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 30 to ascertain how many documents will be provided.

In a separate Judicial Watch lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that the State Department must start releasing deleted Clinton emails on Sept. 13.

Update:

The State Department contacted The Daily Caller after this article was published to dispute that the records in the Judicial Watch lawsuit have been definitively found to include Benghazi-related materials.

“As we have said, the Department agreed to search the materials we received from the FBI in response to several pending FOIA requests and, to the extent responsive records are identified, produce them,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said.

“Using broad search terms, we have identified a number of documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request. At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive. We also have not determined if they involve Secretary Clinton.”

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