The State Department admitted last week that it had withheld a key email from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the 2012 Benghazi attacks for more than a year in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, President Tom Fitton said Tuesday.
"Had the department disclosed the email when first supposedly found, Clinton’s email server and her hidden emails would have been revealed before she authorized the alleged deletion of tens of thousands of emails," Fitton wrote in an op-ed on
Brietbart News.
The email, which contains Clinton's non-state.gov email address, was to be disclosed no later than September 2014, he said.
Dated Sept. 29, 2012, Clinton received
the email from then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, which discussed the talking points for Clinton's calls with senators about the Benghazi assaults, Fitton said.
Judicial Watch filed its FOIA request in July 2014, seeking all records relating to the talking points used by former United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and other Obama administration officials in the immediate aftermath of the attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two former Navy SEALs.
The State Department disclosed in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth that was released last week that it had found the 2012 email in 2014 but withheld it.
"Also, upon further review, the department has determined that one document previously withheld in full in our letter dated November 12, 2014, may now be released in part," the State Department told the court in an April 18, 2016 letter.
However, the November 2014, letter does not discuss any withheld emails, Fitton said.
"A search declaration suggests the hidden email was found in September 2014 as a result of a search in response to Judicial Watch's lawsuit," he said.
"The result of all this is that we now know that the Obama administration consciously refused to give up key information about Hillary Clinton’s email in 2014," Fitton concluded. "It covered up this email both from the court and Judicial Watch."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.