Judicial Watch: State Department Did Not Provide Secure BlackBerry to Hillary Clinton

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that the State Department asserts in its most recent filing with the court the State Department did not issue personal computing devices to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and possibly destroyed the Blackberries of her aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills:

[The State Department] does not believe that any personal computing device was issued by the Department to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and has not located any such device at the Department. [The State Department] believes that Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin were each issued BlackBerry devices. [The State Department] has not located any such device at the Department … Because the devices issued to Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed.

State did identify the “state.gov” email accounts of Mills, Abedin and two other former officials, but stated that Clinton “did not use a state.gov account.”

The filing follows the recent court order granting Judicial Watch’s request for a hearing this week, on Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 12:00 p.m., which had previously been scheduled for September. State recently sought a one-week extension from the court, and the judge denied it (the court changed the time of the hearing to 1 p.m.)

“The questions just keep popping up. Every time the State Department tries to justify its stonewalling, one more bit of information arises,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “If the State Department was not providing secure email devices to Mrs. Clinton, who was? Best Buy? Target? Mrs. Clinton clearly did whatever she wanted, without regard to national security or federal records keeping laws.”

The developments come in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about Hillary Clinton’s email records.