In an interview that aired Wednesday night during FOX News Channel’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum” program, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was asked repeatedly if the Department of Justice was re-opening, or had considered re-opening, the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and mishandling of classified documents.
Rosenstein, whose responses can only be described as “guarded,” oftentimes referred to his congressional testimony as it related to the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and his personal criticisms of the manner in which Comey handled the Clinton investigation. He frequently used “yes” and “no” answers, which forced MacCallum to dig harder for answers.
His reticence is a product of strictly sticking to Department of Justice rules regarding communications about potential investigations.
“Every decision we make … about whether to investigate, whether to prosecute, is based upon the facts in the law [and] an independent determination with the insight and investigative work of our career agents and prosecutors,” he said at one point. He later added that he was disappointed with the publicity Comey created surrounding the Clinton investigation, not necessarily the outcome.
“I’ve never commented on the substance of the investigation and I’m not going to do that now.”
You can watch the entire interview segment in the video clip below. It certainly has a lot of people talking about what may or may not happen to Clinton going forward.
In the meantime, however, Judicial Watch was back in a federal courtroom Thursday, pressing for greater transparency in the former secretary of state’s government work emails that have been recovered from her private server. The hearing, which began at 10 a.m. EDT, was to focus on the Department of State’s progress on processing the 100,000 emails Clinton failed to disclose, some of which were emails sent by Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop of her estranged husband, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner.
The government was ordered to produce documents to Judicial Watch, but has been processing the emails at a rate of only 500 pages per month. So far, only 17 batches of documents have been produced—and, at the current pace, the Clinton emails and other records won’t be fully available for possible release until at least 2020.
“June 15, the FBI provided a new disc of records related to Judicial Watch’s Hillary Clinton email lawsuit to the State Department,” Judicial Watch said in a statement ahead of the hearing. “[T]he State Department hopefully will tell the court about its records appraisal processes and propose a schedule for their release to Judicial Watch.” {eoa}
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