Judicial Watch’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email system entered a significant new phase last week.

We announced a schedule of depositions of Hillary Clinton’s top aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, as well as top State Department official Patrick Kennedy and former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano.

Their testimony is about the creation and operation of Clinton’s non-government email system. The first witness, Lewis A. Lukens, a deputy assistant secretary, was deposed on May 18. I can’t say much about the testimony at this point, other than to tell you that it was not helpful to either Mrs. Clinton or the Obama State Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan set this historic evidence gathering in motion. Judge Sullivan granted us “discovery” into Clinton’s email system, noting that “based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary.”

The depositions are part of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton. The lawsuit, which seeks records regarding the authorization for Abedin to engage in outside employment (the Clinton Foundation and other Clinton, Inc. entities) while employed by the Department of State, was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).

We have permission from the court to question these individuals for as long as seven hours:

May 18 – Lewis A. Lukens, deputy assistant secretary of state and executive director of the State Department’s Executive Secretariat from 2008 to 2011, who emailed with Patrick Kennedy and Cheryl Mills about setting up a computer for Clinton to check her clintonemail.com email account. (This testimony took a little over two hours.) May 27 – Cheryl D. Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff throughout her four years as secretary of state. June 3 – Stephen D. Mull, executive secretary of the State Department from June 2009 to October 2012, who suggested that Clinton be issued a State Department BlackBerry, which would protect her identity and would also be subject to FOIA requests. June 6 – Bryan Pagliano, State Department Schedule C employee who has been reported to have serviced and maintained the server that hosted the “clintonemail.com” system during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. June 8 – 30(b)(6) deposition(s) of the State Department regarding the processing of FOIA requests, including Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, for emails of Clinton and Abedin both during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and after. June 28 – Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and a senior advisor to Clinton throughout her four years as secretary of state and also had an email account on clintonemail.com. June 29 – Patrick F. Kennedy, undersecretary for management since 2007 and the secretary of state’s principal advisor on management issues, including technology and information services.

As you will see below, in a separate FOIA lawsuit concerning Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi terrorist attack, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth also ruled that we could conduct discovery into the email practices of Clinton and her top aides.

This court-order testimony could finally reveal new truths about how Hillary Clinton and the Obama State Department subverted the Freedom of the Information Act.