Watchdog groups Judicial Watch and Cause of Action filed separate lawsuits last year to try and recover emails Hillary Clinton sent and received on her private email server as secretary of state. The suits were tossed when the State Department obtained tens of thousands of those emails when it went digging for the missing correspondence.
Yet, on Tuesday, D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams said the shovel can reach a bit further in the ground. He has revived the lawsuits in an attempt to recover more of Clinton's emails.
Clinton and her attorneys, however, insist there are no more emails to be found."Even though those efforts bore some fruit, the Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder — e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General — might not bear more still. It is therefore abundantly clear that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants have not 'been given everything [they] asked for,'" Williams wrote in the court's opinion, joined by Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Robert Wilkins. "Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot."