Getty State Department fights Hillary Clinton deposition in email suit Government lawyers call the proposal 'wholly inappropriate'.

Lawyers for the State Department are resisting a conservative group’s request that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton be subpoenaed to give a sworn deposition in a lawsuit in which her use of a private email server is in dispute.

In a court filing submitted after 11 p.m. Thursday night, Justice Department attorneys called Judicial Watch’s request “wholly inappropriate.”


The government's submission came just hours before Clinton’s chief of staff during her four-year tenure at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, is scheduled to face a deposition in another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the same conservative group.

The State Department categorically opposed Judicial Watch’s requests for discovery in both of the lawsuits, but federal judges assigned to the cases have ruled that some fact-finding is appropriate given questions about Clinton’s email set-up. After those rulings, the debate in the cases had turned to who should be deposed and in what order.

The suit in which Judicial Watch is seeking Clinton’s testimony involves a request for records relating to talking points prepared for officials discussing the deadly attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. The suit in which Mills and several other top aides to Clinton have been ordered to testify stems from a request for information about the employment arrangements of a longtime aide to Clinton, Huma Abedin. She is scheduled to give a deposition in that case next month.

The new court filing essentially asks the judge handling the Benghazi-related case, Royce Lamberth, to allow the depositions in the other case to play out before allowing Judicial Watch to seek more depositions.

“Judicial Watch makes no attempt here to justify why the witnesses it names would provide any relevant information that is not redundant and cumulative of the discovery that has already been ordered and initiated,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. The filing also noted that Clinton addressed the email issue in public testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi last October.

However, the government said that in light of Lamberth’s ruling in March allowing some discovery it does not object to the conservative group taking a deposition of the agency’s former director of policy planning, Jake Sullivan, now a top policy adviser on Clinton’s presidential campaign. The filing doesn't say explicitly whether Sullivan is willing to agree to give such testimony.

Asked on CBS earlier this month about an ongoing FBI investigation into her email arrangement, Clinton said, “I think last August I made it clear I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime. And I have encouraged all of my assistants to be very forthcoming, and I hope that this is close to being wrapped up.”

Notwithstanding that comment, Clinton and her top aides declined to cooperate with a recently completed State Department inspector general probe into how the use of private email accounts by Clinton and previous secretaries affected record-keeping at State. That probe found her actions violated State Department policies, something she has steadfastly denied while acknowledging the arrangement was a “mistake.”

The government’s new submission also asks that if any additional depositions are ordered that videotapes of the sessions be put under seal. Acting on a request from Mills’ attorneys, Judge Emmet Sullivan imposed such a restriction Thursday in the case where depositions are already underway. However, the proposal for Clinton’s deposition and additional testimony from other ex-officials is pending in front of another judge, who is not bound by Sullivan’s decision.

