Judicial Watch: State Department Asked Hillary Clinton Lawyers to Delete Specific Classified Records, Return Paper Copies

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a letter from the Department of State to Hillary Clinton’s lawyers that includes a list of classified records to be either deleted or returned to the State Department.  The documents were produced under court order in a FOIA lawsuit for all of Clinton emails and for records about her email practices (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)).

The June 30, 2015, letter from Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy to Clinton lawyers David Kendall and Katherine Turner states in part:

I am writing in reference to the e-mails on the attached listing (“listed documents”) that are among the approximately 55,000 pages that were identified as potential federal records and produced on behalf of former Secretary Clinton to the Department of State on December 5, 2014.

Please be advised that portions of the listed documents have now been classified as “Confidential” pursuant to Section 1.7(d) of Executive Order 13526 in connection with a review and release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In order to safeguard and protect the classified information, I ask – consistent with my letters to you dated March 23 and June 19, 2015 – that you, Secretary Clinton and others assisting her in responding to congressional and related inquiries coordinate in taking the steps set forth below.

1. If there are electronic copies of the listed documents in your possession (other than on the master copies that are being secured at your firm), please delete them. Additionally, once you have done that, please empty your “Deleted Items” folder.

2. Place any non-electronic copies of the listed documents that you locate in a brown envelope, seal it, address it to my office and mark the word “CONFIDENTIAL” on the outside of that envelope. Once that is done, please notify us and we will pick up the envelope from your office.

3. If any of these documents have been further disseminated, the recipients must also be put on notice about their classification. As described above, electronic copies should be deleted and non-electronic copies should be retrieved and provided to the Department.

Finally, please note that the classification of portions of the listed documents pursuant to Executive Order 13526, Section 1. 7(d), does not in itself indicate that any person previously acted improperly with respect to the document or the information contained therein….

Attached to the letter is a list of 25 documents, all dated from 2009, under the label, “Reclassification/Classification of Information Under Section 1.7 (d) of Executive Order 13526”:

1. Honduras
2. Meeting Between DSE Farmer and President Preval
3. Note from Bill Burns
4. Re: Update
5. FW: Update on US Support of GOH Plan
6. Fw: DPRK AMCIT DETENTIONS CONFERENCE CALL – a quick addition
7. Fw: DPRK AMCIT DETENTIONS CONFERENCE CALL – a quick addition
8. Fw: DPRK AMCIT DETENTIONS CONFERENCE CALL
9. Fw: Sri Lanka Update
10. Re: DPRK: AMCIT BORDER DETENTIONS UPDATE #47
11. Re: Call Sheets For S calls to JPN, KOR, CHN, and RUS (SBU)
12. Re: Blair
13. Re: Fwd: From Joe Wilson
14. Re: Call to Chinese FM Yang
15. Egypt
16. FW: Late Night Call with Michele Pierre Louis
17. Re: Egypt
18. Re: Egypt
19. Re: DPRK/CHINA: AMCIT BORDER DETENTIONS UPDATE #11
20. Re: DPRK/CHINA: AMCIT BORDER DETENTIONS UPDATE #13
21. Note for the Secretary on May 6 with Sergei Ryabkov and Anatoly Antonov on the Strategic Arms Reduction Follow-on-Treaty (START FO) and the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE)
22. Fw:
23. Fw:
24. Fw: 1 Page Trip Report from China, Korea, and Rome
25. Trip Report from Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Rome

“This letter highlights how the State Department took a casual approach to Hillary Clinton’s violations of law concerning classified information,” stated Tom Fitton.  “The Obama State Department should have sent the FBI to retrieve and secure this classified information.  Does Hillary Clinton still have other classified material she is hiding from the State Department?”

In September 2015, Judicial Watch released State Department documents showing a nearly five-month gap in the emails that Clinton chose to return to the State Department. Shortly afterward, Judicial Watch released correspondence from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy asking Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, to destroy or return all copies of a classified email “forwarded by Jacob Sullivan to Secretary Clinton … (Subject: Fw: FYI – Report of arrests – possible Benghazi connection).” Kendall rejected the request, as Congress and other investigators had demanded electronic records to be preserved.  The correspondence also shows Hillary Clinton ignored a demand to turn over all electronic copies of the approximately 55,000 pages of emails she previously returned in paper form.

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