Judicial Watch Statement on State Department Release of Huma Abedin’s Government Documents on Weiner’s Laptop

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding today’s pending 3:00 pm (Eastern) release by the U.S. Department of State of Huma Abedin’s work-related documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that were found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s personal laptop.

This is a major victory. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials. That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law.

In accordance with a court ordered production of documents, a State Department court filing states: “The State Department “identified approximately 2,800 work-related documents among the documents provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The State Department told the court it expected to complete its review and production of the FBI records by December 31, 2017.

The documents were produced in a May 5, 2015, lawsuit Judicial Watch filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)). Judicial Watch sued after the State Department failed to respond to a March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking: “All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.”

Abedin was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Weiner is a disgraced former congressman and New York mayoral candidate who pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor. Abedin kept a non-State.gov email account that she used repeatedly for government business on Hillary Clinton’s notorious email server(s).

Judicial Watch previously released 20 productions of documents in this case that show examples of mishandling of classified information and instances of pay to play between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Also, at least 627 emails were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over, and further contradict a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to department.

###