Lawyers representing Hillary Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff asked a federal judge to block the release of any audiovisual recording of her deposition testimony in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
Cheryl Mills is set to testify at a deposition on Friday as part of a FOIA lawsuit filed by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch. Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan granted Judicial Watch’s request to conduct “limited discovery” into whether the State Department and Clinton acted in good faith in responding to FOIA requests. Judicial Watch submitted a proposed discovery schedule that requested to take depositions of several of Clinton’s former top aides, including Mills, and Judge Sullivan approved that request earlier this month.
In a motion filed on Wednesday, Mills’ lawyers wrote she “has no objection to the public release of the written transcript of her deposition.” However, they wrote “no additional public interest would be served by the publication of the audiovisual recording.”
The lawyers express concern that “snippets or soundbites of the deposition may be publicized in a way that exploits Ms. Mills image and voice in an unfair and misleading manner.” Furthermore, they ask the court to prevent Judicial Watch from “manipulat[ing] Ms. Mills’ testimony … to advance a partisan agenda that should have nothing to do with this litigation.”
As the motion notes, all of the deposition testimony in this case is already subject to a joint protective order that allows the State Department to ask the court to prevent the release of certain testimony.
Judicial Watch is scheduled to file its response to this motion by noon on Thursday and LawNewz.com will update this article accordingly.
Cheryl Mills Motion to Block Release of Deposition Recordings
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