Two emails from Hillary Clinton's private email account related to the 2012 attack in Benghazi will remain secret following a ruling from a federal judge Tuesday that said a "significant risk to national security" was at stake over their release, The Hill reported.
The emails, with the subject line "Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt," were among the emails stored on Clinton's non-government email server. The messages detail phone calls made by former President Barack Obama to Libyan and Egyptian leaders in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in March ordered the State Department to release to Judicial Watch "eight identical paragraphs" of previously redacted material in those two emails, dated Sept. 13, 2012, following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the government watchdog group.
The State Department asked the court to reconsider, arguing then it made a mistake in failing to claim the emails were classified.
Jackson agreed Tuesday.
"In light of the substantiation of the important national security interests at stake, it does not appear that the agency's failure to invoke Exemption 1 [for classified information] was part of an effort to gain tactical advantage, but rather, it stemmed from inefficiencies at, and extraordinary burdens placed upon, defendant's FOIA unit," Jackson wrote in her 12-page ruling.