Judge upholds Trump administration bid to keep Clinton Benghazi documents secret – By Josh Gerstein (politico.com) / Oct 24 2017
A federal judge has upheld the Trump administration’s right to withhold two emails from Hillary Clinton’s private account that the government contends contain classified information about the U.S. response to the Benghazi attack.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson had previously ordered the two emails to be released to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch concluding that the records did not qualify for the deliberative process protection the government had claimed for them.
The messages from Sept.13, 2012 — two days after the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi — both have the subject line: “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt.”
However, the State Department said it made a mistake by not flagging classified information in the two messages and asked the judge to reverse her prior order. On Tuesday, she agreed.
Typically, the government is required to assert all Freedom of Information Act exemptions at once, after a suit is filed. But Jackson said she would not insist on that in this case because “a significant risk to national security” was at issue.
The judge examined the information behind closed doors and said it involved two calls President Barack Obama made in the wake of the assault that killed the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The message was forwarded to Clinton, who asked an aide to print it, heavily-redacted versions of the documents show.
“In light of the substantiation of the important national security interests at stake, it does not appear that the agency’s failure to invoke Exemption 1 [for classified information] was part of an effort to gain tactical advantage, but rather, it stemmed from inefficiencies at and extraordinary burdens placed upon defendant’s FOIA unit,” Jackson wrote in a 12-page ruling.
Jackson noted that Judicial Watch said State intentionally declared the information unclassified in the first instance to seek to minimize the public’s impression that sensitive information was on Clinton’s private server, but the judge found that argument “unpersuasive” because State classified the same information in another message that was largely withheld.
The Obama appointee called the mix-up a case of “human error” and said she was influenced in her decision by the fact that State “has taken steps to ensure that it does not make the same mistake again.”
A Judicial Watch spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, the group has sharply criticized the Trump administration for resisting public disclosure of information in the Clinton emails, as well as other records related to her tenure as secretary of state.
“It is disheartening that an administration elected to ‘drain the swamp’ is stalling the release of documents to protect Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement earlier this week.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/10/24/clinton-benghazi-documents-secret-244133
PB/TK – Hm, something really stinks on this matter. Now it gives people more wood for the conspiracy fires. But then again it ain’t shocking considering the source that’s holding back
