ANNAPOLIS \u2014 Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh\u2019s office offered a new explanation Friday for why the state has refused to pursue a bar complaint against Hillary Clinton\u2019s lawyers over their role in deleting her emails: They changed the rules.<\/p>\n
Mr. Frosh\u2019s office said a rules change last year \u2014 after the complaint was filed against David E. Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson \u2014 gives them permission to ignore a complaint brought by Ty Clevenger, a crusading lawyer who says he\u2019s being stonewalled because of politics.<\/p>\n
The case has taken a number of twists, with bar counsel, charged with reviewing lawyer complaints, initially saying Mr. Clevenger wasn\u2019t aggrieved \u2014 though the rules at the time didn\u2019t require that proof. Then at a state circuit court hearing the attorney general\u2019s office called Mr. Clevenger\u2019s complaint \u201cfrivolous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, in oral argument at Maryland\u2019s highest court Friday, state lawyers said a rules change that had been in place before the circuit hearing \u2014 but which they forgot about at the time \u2014 gives them permission to refuse to investigate any complaints from people who don\u2019t have personal knowledge.<\/p>\n
In this case, they said, Mr. Clevenger is getting his information from press reports, which they said is no longer enough to force a probe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason for denying the complaint here is he had no personal knowledge,\u201d said Michele J. McDonald, who argued the case for Mr. Frosh, a Democrat, and the state bar.<\/p>\n
Under questioning by one judge, she specifically said that while the state had advanced the \u201cfrivolous\u201d argument before, it was no longer standing by that one.<\/p>\n
Mr. Clevenger expressed frustration afterward, saying it\u2019s \u201ca moving target from one hearing to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got three lawyers who are accused of destroying more than 30,000 pieces of evidence that were sought by multiple subpoenas,\u201d he said. \u201cAny average lawyer who had intentionally destroyed one piece of evidence would have been disbarred. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s not kid ourselves. This is political,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kicking off Friday\u2019s oral argument, the state lawyers tried to get the Court of Appeals, Maryland\u2019s equivalent to a supreme court, to clear the courtroom, kick out reporters and the public and shut down the webcast.<\/p>\n
Ms. McDonald said the bar rules are designed to protect the \u201cintegrity\u201d of the court process, and Mrs. Clinton\u2019s lawyers deserved privacy from unfair accusations.<\/p>\n
The court refused to close the hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsn\u2019t this a problem of once the cat\u2019s out of the bag, how do you get it back in?\u201d said Judge Clayton Greene Jr.<\/p>\n
Mr. Clevenger says the old rules were clear and the state had to investigate any complaint brought before it. He said that doesn\u2019t mean the state had to bring charges, but it must at least probe the matter.<\/p>\n
A circuit court had agreed with him last year, and ordered the investigation into Mr. Kendall, Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson.<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeals put that on hold in order to take the case.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Ms. McDonald argued that the circuit court, which had ordered an investigation, had overstepped its powers and only the Court of Appeals could force a probe.<\/p>\n
At this point, Ms. McDonald said, any request would also have to happen under the new rules that took effect last summer \u2014 after Mr. Clevenger\u2019s complaint, but before the lower court\u2019s hearing \u2014 that allow complaints to be tossed because the complainer doesn\u2019t have knowledge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat rule became effective August 1, 2017 and applies to all pending litigation as well as future complaints,\u201d Ms. McDonald told The Washington Times in an email Friday after the hearing. \u201cUnder that rule, it is clear that Bar Counsel has discretion to decline a complaint that is not based on personal knowledge but instead is derived from published news reports of third party sources.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also dismissed Mr. Clevenger\u2019s complaint that Mr. Kendall and the other lawyers are being treated better than a non-politically connected lawyer would have been. She said a complaint about another lawyer that wasn\u2019t based on personal knowledge \u201ccould likewise be declined under this rule.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judges did not give a sense for when they might rule.<\/p>\n
Mr. Clevenger said after the hearing he is seeking members of Congress who were involved in the investigation into Mrs. Clinton\u2019s emails to come forward and file complaints, which would meet the definition of someone with personal knowledge.<\/p>\n
The case is part of the fallout from Mrs. Clinton\u2019s decision as State Department secretary to forgo a department-based account and instead use a secret account tied to a server she kept at her New York home.<\/p>\n
When her account became known during the probe into the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack Mrs. Clinton turned over about half of her more than 60,000 messages from her time as secretary, but deleted 30,000 messages she said were not work-related.<\/p>\n
Subsequent investigation by the FBI found out that many of them were in fact work-related.<\/p>\n
The FBI investigation said Ms. Mills and Mr. Kendall oversaw the review and deletion process, while Ms. Samuelson did the review and reported to the others. They suggested the emails be deleted in late 2014 \u2014 though the actual deletion didn\u2019t happen under late March 2015, or weeks after a subpoena was issued by a House investigation.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh’s office offered a new explanation Friday for why the state has refused to pursue a bar complaint against Hillary Clinton’s lawyers over their role in deleting he ANNAPOLIS \u2014 Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh\u2019s office offered a new explanation Friday for why the state has refused to pursue a bar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[276],"tags":[273,274,275,22,277],"class_list":["post-2415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-cheryl-mills","tag-david-e-kendall","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-law-crime","tag-ty-clevenger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}