Judge sees rocky road for feds' plan to coordinate Hillary Clinton email lawsuits

By Josh Gerstein, Politico, Sept. 3, 2015

The Justice Department is unlikely to succeed in its new effort to put dozens of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits related to Hillary Clinton's emails in front of a single judge, one judge handling such a case suggested Thursday.

"I don't know how successful you will be," U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said during a hearing on a lawsuit brought by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. "Some information I've heard indicates there may be a reluctance on the part of judges to go along with that because [some cases] are so far along" in the process, Walton added.

The Justice Department filed a motion Wednesday night (posted here), asking that a "coordinating judge" manage schedules for production and preservation of records in at least 32 pending FOIA lawsuits where plaintiffs are seeking or may be entitled to documents from the set of 54,000 pages of emails former Secretary of State Clinton returned to state last year or other sets of records former Clinton State Department aides Cheryl Mills, Jacob Sullivan, Huma Abedin and Philippe Reines returned in recent months on agency requests.

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