Justice Department lawyers argued Thursday the federal government has no responsibility produce Hillary Clinton’s private emails in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Politico reported:
"FOIA creates no obligation for an agency to search for and produce records that it does not possess and control," Justice lawyer Matthew Collette and Catherine Dorsey wrote in the government's first written court submission on the Hillary Clinton email issue. The filing (posted here) came in response to a motion by conservative gadfly Larry Klayman asking for contempt proceedings against Clinton and one of her former top aides.
The filing Justice submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit says that the State Department is now processing for release under FOIA 55,000 pages of work-related emails Clinton sent to the agency in December. The roughly 30,000 messages had been sent or received on a private email account during her tenure as secretary […] Klayman proposed issuing a subpoena to take control of the former secretary's email server, but the Justice lawyers said such a move was unwarranted.
"Such action is unnecessary and inappropriate under FOIA," Collette and Dorsey wrote. "Plaintiff provides no basis, beyond sheer speculation, to believe that former Secretary Clinton withheld any work-related emails from those provided to the Department of State."