Judge complains he was lied to by feds in Clinton email suit, then retreats

Josh Gerstein, Politico, Oct. 12, 2018

A federal judge complained Friday that he was lied to by the State Department in a suit related to Hillary Clinton's private email server, but he later backed off his claim, saying he may have been mistaken.

At a hearing on a Freedom of Information Act case about talking points related to the Benghazi attack, Judge Royce Lamberth complained that officials told the court that they had completed searching the agency's records for information on the topic even though they knew that Clinton and other officials had used private email accounts for official business.

"The State Department told me it had produced all the records," Lamberth complained. "That was not true at the time....It was not true. It was a lie."

Justice Department attorney Robert Prince repeatedly interrupted, denying the judge's claim.

"It was not a lie, your honor," Prince said during the tense exchange. He went on to say that while the State Department had not immediately revealed the internal effort to recover Clinton's email, it did search those messages soon after receiving them.

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