The move was prompted by a request from Judicial Watch Friday afternoon. | Getty Judge sets hearing on demand for Hillary Clinton deposition

A federal judge has set a hearing for later this month on a conservative group's demand that Hillary Clinton testify in a civil lawsuit relating to the home-based email server she used as secretary of state.

After Judicial Watch made the request Friday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan almost immediately ordered the government to respond by Tuesday and he set a hearing on the issue for July 18. That happens to be the first day of the Republican National Convention and a week before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, where Clinton is expected to receive the Democratic presidential nomination.


Sullivan previously authorized the conservative watchdog group to conduct depositions of several former aides to Clinton, including former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, computer specialist Bryan Pagliano and current Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy. The testimony was ordered in connection with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Judicial Watch filed seeking records about Abedin’s employment arrangements.

In its motion Friday, Judicial Watch said the deposition of Clinton is needed because the earlier testimony failed to clarify why Clinton used the private email system and whether it was intended to frustrate Freedom of Information Act requests.

“Secretary Clinton’s testimony is necessary to answer the ‘questions surrounding the creation, purpose and use’ of the clintonemail.com system,” Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha wrote. “It was her system. She was the primary driving force behind it and was its principal user. She chose to make exclusive use of the system for all of her official email communications and to allow one of her key aides, Ms. Abedin, to use the unofficial system for official communications as well. Without Secretary Clinton’s testimony, there can be no fair, rightful, and conclusive answer to the Court’s questions.”

The motion says it remains unclear why Clinton clung to the system, even when it interfered with her job after her messages were caught in State Department spam filters. Records obtained by Judicial Watch and others show Clinton expressed concerns about using an official State account, writing in one message to Abedin: “Let’s get separate address on device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”

“This evidence suggests that, despite the recurrent problems, frustration, and security issues associated with Secretary Clinton’s use of the clintonemail.com system (and after her staff was reminded about FOIA obligations), the secretary nonetheless decided to continue using the system to conduct official government business instead of switching to an official, State Department email system,” Bekesha wrote. “Only Secretary Clinton can answer why she chose to continue using this flawed, frustrating, non-secure system for her official State Department emails, as well as what she meant about not ‘want[ing] any risk of the personal being accessible.’”

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement, "This right wing organization has been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s so it's no surprise that after the Justice Department declared this case closed, they are trying to keep this issue alive in order to try to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign for President."

In May, Judicial Watch sought a deposition of Clinton in another FOIA lawsuit the group is pursuing, seeking records related to the creation of talking points about the 2012 Benghazi attack. That case is pending before another judge, who has not yet acted on the request.

The State Department opposed that request for Clinton's testimony. State is also opposing the latest request, Judicial Watch said.

Judicial Watch's new motion also seeks depositions of two individuals who were not called to testify in the earlier round: a key FOIA staffer in Clinton’s office, Clarence Finney, and former State information technology supervisor John Bentel.