Washington, DC – Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) and Judicial Watch, Inc. today filed a joint brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia arguing that email records from the private server of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton likely exist and have yet to be recovered by the State Department in accordance with the Federal Records Act. This evidence was ignored in a previous decision by the lower court.
On December 5, 2014, twenty-two months after Sec. Clinton left office, paper copies of 30,490 work-related emails were delivered to the State Department. However, Secretary Clinton held back an additional 31,830 emails, which her attorneys declared to be personal records. None of those additional emails were reviewed by anyone at the State Department or the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
CoA Institute President and CEO, and former federal judge, Alfred J. Lechner, Jr.: “Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not preserve her emails in accordance with the law and the State Department should be held accountable. Evidence shows that the email Mrs. Clinton belatedly returned to the State Department is an incomplete set. Through its appeal, the Cause of Action Institute seeks to compel Secretary Kerry and NARA to recover all of Mrs. Clinton’s email records in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”
The brief shows the defendants have refused to initiate action through the Attorney General to recover a complete and accurate set of all federal records that Secretary Clinton unlawfully removed from State Department custody. The brief follows the release of a recent State Department Office of Inspector General (IG) report that also found Hillary Clinton failed to comply with the Federal Records Act. Consistent with the brief filed today, the IG report found that Mrs. Clinton failed to provide all of her emails to the State Department.
Cause of Action Institute filed its initial complaint on July 8, 2015 in federal court in Washington, D.C. The defendants in that suit argued the case was moot because the State Department received 55,000 pages of emails from Mrs. Clinton. The district court agreed with defendants and dismissed the suit. Today’s filing presents compelling evidence that contradicts the lower court’s decision. Cause of Action Institute’s case has been consolidated with a similar case by Judicial Watch.
