Washington (CNN) Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can be deposed for a lawsuit about the State Department's recordkeeping of her emails, a federal judge said Monday.

Judge Royce Lamberth's order authorizing right-leaning group Judicial Watch to question Clinton and others effectively breathes new life into the years-long pursuit of Clinton's emails about State Department business on a private server.

"Any further discovery should focus on whether she used a private server to evade [the Freedom of Information Act] and, as a corollary to that, what she understood about State's records management obligations," Lamberth wrote in his order.

Judicial Watch had asked to depose Clinton, top aide Cheryl Mills and other former State Department employees in a six-year-old court case seeking public access to the emails from the State Department. Lamberth said that in addition to Clinton, the group also could depose two State Department technology managers who worked on Clinton's email management, as well as Mills. Judicial Watch, however, cannot ask Clinton or Mills about the US government's response to the 2012 Benghazi attack, Lamberth said.

Judicial Watch can also subpoena Google for records related to Clinton's email while she was secretary of state, according to the judge's order.

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