Just days after Hillary Clinton’s private email use was revealed to the world, the former secretary of state approved a top aide’s plan to push back on the fledgling scandal by filing records requests for Congress members’ emails, newly released emails show.

The requests would have been pure political theater since Congress’ emails are not covered by the Federal Records Act, in contrast to the State Department’s and other executive agencies.

But Clinton didn’t want the aide’s fingerprints on the project, so she suggested that he find someone else to carry it out.

“I told HRC yesterday I was going to submit FOIA requests to the Rs on the committee and etc just to trigger their offices sending me replies that Congress is exempt from FOIA and therefore they are rejecting my request,” Philippe Reines wrote in a March 5, 2015 email to John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman whose hacked emails have recently been released by Wikileaks – READ MORE