Federal Court Hearing on FBI Clinton Records – Agency Wants Up to Two Years to Turn Over 35 Records

Hearing Set for Tuesday, February 7

(Washington DC) – Judicial Watch today announced a hearing will be held Tuesday, February 7, 2017, regarding Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records held by the FBI containing text messages and emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stored on the equipment of Datto Inc., a commercial data management company, as well as FBI records about the device and what materials were recovered on it (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:16-cv-02369)).  The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss.

At the previous hearing Tuesday, January 24, 2017, Trump administration lawyers for the FBI informed Judicial Watch and the court that it located 35 FBI records that concern the Datto device and that it may take up to two years to release the records.  In addition, the FBI recovered approximately 10,000 messages from the Datto device.  The messages were turned over to the State Department to be processed and released on its website.

Tomorrow’s hearing should address whether the Trump FBI will be able to slow walk the release of these records.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeks:

• All records, including but not limited to emails or text messages (SMSs, MMSs, BBMs, iMessages, etc.), discovered, recovered, retrieved from, or found on any Datto device, equipment, or hardware connected to or used to backup or support former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s clintonemail.com email system.

• All records relating to the FBI’s efforts to discover, recover, retrieve, or find emails or text messages stored on the Datto device, equipment, or hardware …

Clinton reportedly was using an online backup service called Datto Inc. to create copies of her data during a time when she and her aides were improperly handling classified material. Datto’s website company promises data is “invincible, secure, and instantly restorable at any time.

Datto announced it had turned over a “hardware device” to the FBI, along with all Clinton emails the company had in its possession, possibly including Clinton’s deleted private emails:

“With the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, yesterday, Tuesday, October 6, Datto delivered a hardware device to the FBI containing all backed up data related to Platte Rivers Networks’ client known to be in its possession,” said the company.

The court hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning:

Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Time: 10 a.m. ET

Location: Courtroom 21

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

333 Constitution Ave NW

Washington, DC 20001

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