Hillary Clinton gestures as she attends a news conference in Berlin, Germany, February 25, 2020. (Michele Tantussi/Reuters)

A federal judge has ordered Hillary Clinton to sit for a sworn deposition regarding her use of a private email account while serving as secretary of state.

U.S. District Court Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, on Monday filed the order for Clinton to appear for a deposition in a five-year-old case brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Clinton emails pertaining to the 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.


Clinton has previously said she used a private server to read government email as a matter of convenience. The FBI investigated Clinton’s use of the server to read classified material and in July 2016 recommended against bringing charges in the case; however, in October that same year the FBI announced it would reopen the investigation after discovering previously unknown emails on the server. The investigation was publicly reopened just days before election day and is widely believed to have bolstered Trump’s prospects.

“To argue that the Court now has enough information to determine whether State conducted an adequate search is preposterous,” Lamberth wrote in his ruling. “Even years after the FBI investigation, the slow trickle of new emails has yet to be explained…Why did she think that using a private server to conduct State Department business was permissible under the law in the first place?”

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