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AP Photo Judge bails on suit against Clinton over Benghazi deaths

A federal judge with a long history of sharp criticism of President Bill Clinton's administration and some of his senior aides has bowed out of handling a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton by the parents of two Americans killed in the 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

Patricia Smith, the mother of State Department information officer Sean Smith, and Charles Woods, the father of CIA operative Tyrone Woods, filed the case in federal court in Washington in August. The suit — brought by conservative attorney and longtime Clinton nemesis Larry Klayman — claimed that Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state compromised sensitive information about U.S. operations in Benghazi and led to the deaths of four Americans, including the younger Smith and Woods.

When the suit was filed, Klayman designated it as related to a Freedom of Information Act case filed in 2014 seeking records about Obama administration talking points related to the Benghazi attacks.

The designation guaranteed that the new suit would be assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, who handled the talking points suit and a series of lawsuits against the Clinton administration in the 1990s.

In one, Lamberth ruled that the health care reform task force headed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was subject to a federal law requiring open meetings and public access to records. (An appeals court later reversed the core of that decision.) The Reagan appointee was also harshly critical of the Clinton administration and its personnel in high-profile cases involving FBI security files the Clinton White House hung on to about George H.W. Bush administration staffers and involving the alleged sale to campaign donors of slots on Commerce Department trade missions.

Without citing that history which must be well known to the judge and both sides, lawyers for Hillary Clinton last month formally protested Klayman's effort to direct the new suit to Lamberth.

"Because these cases have almost nothing in common, there is no basis for departure from the general rule of random assignment," Clinton's lawyers wrote. "These two cases do not present common issues of fact."

Clinton's legal team also said Klayman had a pattern of trying to route his cases to particular judges.

"Klayman has repeatedly abused this court’s related-case procedures. Counsel has frequently tried to funnel his cases to certain district court judges by strategically claiming that his cases are 'related' to other pending cases," wrote the Clinton lawyers, headed by longtime Clinton attorney David Kendall of Williams & Connolly.

On Tuesday, Lamberth sided with Clinton, throwing the wrongful death case back into the electronic hopper for reassignment. He did not explain his decision deeming the cases unrelated.

The Benghazi victims' parents' suit was then randomly placed on the docket of U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee.