Hillary Clinton's quest to put her email scandal in the rear-view mirror was dealt another blow Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. | AP Photo Judge rules Clinton staff can be questioned about emails

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that top Hillary Clinton staff should be questioned under oath about her use of a private email — another potential setback to the Democratic frontrunner's effort to leave the email controversy behind.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan granted a motion for discovery filed by Judicial Watch, which sued the State Department for Clinton-related documents and is now arguing there is “reasonable suspicion” that Clinton or State staff tried to thwart the Freedom of Information Act. That law requires all work emails to be archived in a government systems for public view.


Discovery in FOIA cases is relatively rare and presents political risk for Clinton: While the group has not yet called for Clinton to answer question personally, it said it may in the future as part of discovery. The process will likely entail attorneys asking questions of her top staff via deposition or written Q&A about why Clinton used a private email server in the first place and how they eventually determined what was an “official” record to be preserved.

The Clinton blasted the ruling as a political stunt from the right.

“This is one of several lawsuits filed by the same right-wing group, which will stop at nothing in pursuing the Clintons, just as they have done since the 1990s,” said Nick Merrill, Clinton campaign spokesman.

“The ruling a major victory in terms of moving forward to finding out the full truth about the Clinton email system,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a phone interview. “Our goal is to make sure in the end that all the records that should have been looked at, should have been reviewed, are disclosed to the public as the law requires.”

The process will take months, at the least, meaning the case could easily extend all the way through Election Day and give Republicans new ammunition to use on the trail.

The ruling comes as the FBI is working alongside State and intelligence community inspectors general to investigate whether laws governing the use of classified information were ever broken or if the server posed a security threat. More than 1,600 documents that passed through Clinton’s server have since been classified by State — and a number of them reached the “top secret” level.

Courts have required the State Department to ask the FBI for copies of any additional emails they discovered on the Clinton account to double-check that all official documents were turned over. Conservative groups and lawmakers have suggested that some records that would have been embarrassing to Clinton were intentionally left out, though Clinton’s campaign has said they were over inclusive in deciding what was work-related.

The Judicial Watch lawsuit originally focused on documents surrounding the dual job status of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Abedin worked for the Clinton Foundation and an outside consulting firm with Clinton ties called Teneo, while still advising Clinton at State — an arrangement that was approved by the department. Congressional Republicans believe those jobs may have equated to a conflict of interest. Abedin’s lawyers have said they did not.

Since news of Clinton’s use of a private email sever broke, however, the lawsuit has increasingly focused on how Clinton and State went about deciding what were public records.

Fitton said the judge mentioned in the hearing he is considering subpoenaing Clinton for all of her emails, not just the ones her staff and lawyer deemed official.

“He said he didn’t know how he could not conclude that there was a ‘reasonable suspicion,’” that aides tiptoed around FOIA, pointing to not only the State IG report but also emails suggesting top State staff knew of the personal email set up.

The ruling comes just hours after a 10 a.m. hearing on the matter in Washington. Judicial Watch lawyers argued that there was “reasonable suspicion” that Clinton and her staff intentionally tried to undermine record-keeping rules. They held up as proof a State inspector general report published in January that blasted the department for inaccurate and incomplete responses to FOIA requests on Clinton email accounts.

So far, the group has not sought to depose Clinton, but says it may still do so.

“Mrs. Clinton’s testimony might not be needed, but eventually it might be,” Fitton said. “To be clear, we’re not asking for Mrs. Clinton [to answer questions now], but it might be required eventually.”

For now the group is expected to propose questioning her top staffers about why she used a homebrew email server as well as the process they used to determine which of her more than 60,000 emails were work related or personal. Clinton’s camp has not gone into detail about that process, but after turning over half of those documents, they deleted the rest.

Fitton said Judicial Watch has until March 15 to propose a discovery plan, including who they want to interview and how. The judge in the hearing specified that the ruling should be “narrowly tailored.” The government will then be able to respond and push back, and ultimately the judge is expected to rule by April 15 on what “discovery” might entail, Fitton said.

The group has previously expressed interest in questioning via deposition or written questions: Clinton’s former State chief of staff Cheryl Mills, Abedin, her current lawyer David Kendall, her top IT staffer Bryan Pagliano and Undersecretary for Management Pat Kennedy.

