Judicial Watch Sues State Department Seeking Hillary's Emails

The conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch sued the U.S. State Department, demanding that it turn over email exchanges and other communications between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

The lawsuit in Washington federal court Wednesday came as the government said Clinton used a personal email account to conduct official business instead of a government account.

Earlier, the department failed to respond to a request for the documents under federal open-records law, the group alleged.

Tom Fitton, president of Washington-based Judicial Watch, said in a statement that the department violated the law "rather than admit that it couldn’t and wouldn’t search the secret accounts."

A State Department representative didn’t immediately respond to a call seeking comment on the complaint.

The lawsuit is one of almost a dozen the organization says it has filed in an effort to require the State Department to search and turn over information from personal or secret email accounts. The organization said it is examining whether Morsi’s wife, Naglaa Mahmoud, threatened to expose damaging information about Clinton after the former Egyptian president was ousted.

The discovery of Clinton’s use of a personal email account was made after the State Department last year began reaching out to former secretaries of state, asking them to submit records for preservation. After Clinton complied, about 300 emails were turned over to a congressional committee investigating the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. The attack killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The case is Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of State, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.