Federal Court Hearing Scheduled for Thursday, March 31 in Judicial Watch FOIA Case on Benghazi, Clinton Emails

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announces that a hearing is to be held in the District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, March 31, 2016, on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.  The hearing is in a Judicial Watch case against the Department of State.

On May 8, 2015, the U.S. District Court reopened a FOIA lawsuit seeking documents regarding the State Department’s production and dissemination of an advertisement intended to air in Pakistan titled “A Message from the President of the United States Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:12-cv-02034)).  Judicial Watch initially filed suit in December 2012, after the State Department failed to respond to a September 24, 2012, FOIA request for all records concerning the advertisement produced by the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.  The advertisement was seen as an apology for the Internet video that President Obama, then-Secretary of State Clinton, and other administration officials falsely blamed for inspiring “spontaneous demonstrations” resulting in the attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya.  The lawsuit was reopened because of the Clinton email revelations.

Through this lawsuit, Judicial Watch released Obama administration correspondence containing a letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy asking Hillary Clinton’s lawyer to destroy all electronic copies of a classified email found in records Clinton decided to turn over to the State Department six months before.  Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, rejected the request, as Congress and other investigators had demanded electronic records be preserved.  The correspondence, added as an attachment to the filing arguing against a protective order in the litigation, also shows Hillary Clinton ignored a demand to turn over all electronic copies of the approximately 55,000 pages of emails she previously returned in paper form.

The hearing before Judge Reggie B. Walton is scheduled for:

Time: 10:45 am ET
Location: Courtroom 16
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001

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