Deleted Clinton emails now likely subject to open records requests
By Sarah Westwood, Washington Examiner, July 7, 2016
While the case was unrelated to the Clinton email controversy, it could open the door for media outlets and watchdog groups to obtain the official emails that FBI agents recovered from Clinton's private servers.
Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who regularly handles FOIA cases, said the Justice Department has likely lost its ability to hide behind exemptions in the open records law that protect documents related to an ongoing investigation from disclosure.
"They're in the possession of the FBI, so they're agency records as far as I'm concerned and should be subject to FOIA, especially because a number of those were work emails that were deleted by the lawyers," Zaid said.
He said Clinton's legal team "failed" in their duty to provide the government with all of the former secretary of state's official communication, although he stopped short of attributing those omissions to "malicious thought."
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