WASHINGTON (AP) – The State Department has agreed to a conservative legal group’s request to question several current and former government officials about the creation of Hillary Clinton’s private email system.
The agreement filed late Friday with the U.S. District Court in Washington comes after a judge consented to allow the group Judicial Watch “limited discovery” to probe why Clinton relied on an email server in her New York home during her tenure as secretary of state.
Questions about the email system have bedeviled Clinton during her run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
If Judge Emmet G. Sullivan approves of Friday’s agreement, lawyers from Judicial Watch will be allowed to depose Clinton’s top aides, including former chief of staff Cheryl D. Mills, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and undersecretary Patrick F. Kennedy.
Also on the list to be questioned is Bryan Pagliano, the department employee who set up and maintained Clinton’s home brew email system. Pagliano previously invoked his Fifth Amendment right in declining to answer questions from a congressional committee.