- Sputnik International
World
Get the latest news from around the world, live coverage, off-beat stories, features and analysis.

Not a Matter of ‘Public Interest’: FBI Keeps Clinton Emails Secret

© AP Photo / Craig Ruttle)Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughs while speaking during the Book Expo event in New York Thursday, June 1, 2017.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughs while speaking during the Book Expo event in New York Thursday, June 1, 2017. - Sputnik International
Subscribe
An attorney seeking the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was rebuked by the FBI on the grounds that the public’s interest in seeing the former top diplomat’s electronic correspondence is not greater than Clinton’s “personal privacy interests.”

"You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject," FBI Records Director David Hardy told Ty Clevenger in a letter dated August 28, 2017.

Chelsea Clinton, left, and her mother, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton - Sputnik International
'Bullsh*t': Ex-Clinton Aide Furious After Getting Thrown ‘Under the Bus’

Despite a storied career in the public eye for decades as secretary of state, two-time presidential candidate, senator of New York, and for eight years first lady of the US, Hardy and the FBI found that Clinton’s communications stored on a private email server still don’t fall within the public interest — even though she was a public servant at the time she used the shadowy servers.

Clevenger told the Washington Times that including documentation proving the public interest was superfluous for the Freedom of Information Act request, but that he attached such documents to his request to preempt a "public interest" rejection.

Specifically, the Brooklyn-based attorney said that he cited a letter by former House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia dated August 15, 2016.

Chaffetz’s letter alleged that, based on the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s infamous private servers, "several pieces" of Clinton’s Benghazi testimony on October 22, 2015 "appear to implicate … the criminal statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements."

Loretta Lynch is sworn in to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on her nomination to be U.S. attorney general on Capitol Hill in Washington - Sputnik International
Ex-AG Used Fake Name With US Media After Clinton Plane Meeting Scandal

"How can a story receive national news coverage and not be a matter of public interest?" Clevenger pondered rhetorically in an interview with the Times. He can file an appeal or seek dispute resolution services, according to the FBI.

In a separate front on the pursuit to tear down the curtain hiding Clinton’s emails, conservative watchdog Judicial Watch is slated to receive a tranche of state.gov emails from the State Department by September 22 following a court order

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала