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FOIA News: Court protects two Clinton-Benghazi emails as classified

FOIA News (2015-2023)Allan BlutsteinComment

Judge upholds Trump administration bid to keep Clinton Benghazi documents secret

By Josh Gerstein, Politico, Oct. 24, 2017

A federal judge has upheld the Trump administration's right to withhold two emails from Hillary Clinton's private account that the government contends contain classified information about the U.S. response to the Benghazi attack.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson had previously ordered the two emails to be released to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch concluding that the records did not qualify for the deliberative process protection the government had claimed for them.

The messages from Sept.13, 2012 — two days after the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi — both have the subject line: "Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt."

However, the State Department said it made a mistake by not flagging classified information in the two messages and asked the judge to reverse her prior order. On Tuesday, she agreed.

Read more here.