At least five emails determined to be classified were found among 2,800 documents stored on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, whose then-wife Huma Abedin was deputy chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The State Department released hundreds of pages of materials Friday afternoon, including a total of eight pages classified at the ‘confidential level,’ the third most sensitive level the U.S. government uses.
The emails date from 2010, 2011 and 2012 and concern discussions with Middle East leaders including some from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Large portions, including entire pages, were redacted before the documents’ release.
Three of them were sent either to or from an address called ‘BBB Backup,’ which one email identifies as a backup of a Blackberry Bold 9700, presumably belonging to Abedin.
Court documents in a case between Judicial Watch and the State Department revealed that Huma Abedin (pictured) had had 2,800 work-related emails saved on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer, and the documents are set for release on Friday
The right-leaning watchdog group Judicial Watch continues to push to get Hillary Clinton’s (left) emails made public, including those of her former deputy chief of staff Abedin, who had left some on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s (right) computer
One page of a document released Friday is heavily redacted and marked ‘classified’; it mentions ‘update on Hamas-PA talks,’ referring to the Palestinian Authority
This is page 1 of a four-page classified document found on Weiner’s computer; it was a ‘call sheet’ meant to guide Hillary Clinton through a sensitive phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu
The work-related emails and other documents were recovered from Weiner’s computer last year by the FBI.
Tom Fitton, president of the center-right government transparency group Judicial Watch, tweeted on Thursday afternoon about whether President Donald Trump’s Justice Department would ‘finally take action on Clinton/Abedin misdeeds.’
Weiner handed his computer over to federal investigators as the FBI probed allegations that he had been sexting with an underage girl, a story first broken by DailyMail.com.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton surprised Clinton-watchers on Thursday by tweeting that the State Department would release a cache of materials on Friday related to her classified email scandal
Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison in September over the sexting case, and reported to a federal correctional facility early last month to begin service his time.
Judicial Watch has pressed in court for the public release of emails and other materials from Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
The Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit that resulted in Friday’s coming document-dump was filed in May 2015.
Fitton told DailyMail.com on Friday that it’s ‘outrageous’ that Clinton and Abedin ‘walked out of the State Department with classified documents and the Obama FBI and DOJ didn’t do a thing about it.’
‘We expect that we will be told that some of these classified materials were on Weiner’s laptop, which is highly disturbing. Let’s hope it spurs a long needed Clinton special counsel or, at least, a serious criminal investigation,’ he added.
The State Department has said that its preliminary review suggested ‘a significant portion of the materials may be duplicative’ of other material that has already been made public.
But Fitton still believes Clinton and Abedin, her longtime aide and deputy chief of staff, committed crimes by exchanging classified material in private emails connected to Clinton’s now-infamous homebrew server.
‘This is a disturbing development,’ Fitton said in September after the State Department revealed how many government emails and other documents ended up on Weiner’s PC.
‘Our experience with Abedin’s emails suggest these Weiner laptop documents will include classified and other sensitive materials.’
The FBI investigated Clinton’s emails but closed the probe during last year’s presidential election season.
In July 2016, then FBI Director James Comey hosted a press conference announcing that the FBI would recommend to the Department of Justice that Democratic nominee Clinton not be charged for mishandling classified information.
While Comey called Clinton ‘extremely careless’ in her handling of sensitive information he also said that no ‘reasonable prosecutor’ would bring a criminal case against her.
Then, in October, Comey wrote a letter to lawmakers informing them of new emails found on Weiner’s computer – a revelation that threw Clinton’s campaign into a tailspin.
Just days after Comey’s letter was made public the FBI announced that nothing new had been found and that the case against Clinton had been closed again.
But Judicial Watch sued again, demanding ‘[a]ll 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.