Hillary Clinton's Benghazi investigation isn't over yet — this is why

According to a new report by Politico, the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server pertaining to the 2012 Benghazi attack isn't quite done.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta — originally appointed by President Barack Obama — ordered new searches for Clinton's Benghazi emails, claiming that the State Department did not do a sufficient enough job when initially responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests about Clinton's emails, specifically those having anything to do with the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans.

The State Department unearthed over 300 messages related to Benghazi on a private server belonging to the former presidential nominee in 2014

Mehta, in response to prodding by Judicial Watch — a conservative watchdog group — ordered the State Department to search its own systems for Benghazi-related material.

“An agency ‘cannot limit its search to only one record system if there are others that are likely to turn up the information requested,’” Mehta wrote in the order, which was issued on Tuesday.

Mehta continued, “To date, State has searched only data compilations originating from outside sources—Secretary Clinton, her former aides, and the FBI ... It has not, however, searched the one records system over which it has always had control and that is almost certain to contain some responsive records: the state.gov email server.”

During the initial 2014 investigation, the State Department claimed that archiving of government email was not automated, but Mehta was not deterred.

“State has offered no assurance that the three record compilations it received [from Clinton and aides], taken together, constitute the entirety of Secretary Clinton’s emails during the time period relevant to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request,” Mehta said.

“This matter is a far cry from a typical FOIA case,” he continued. “Secretary Clinton used a private email server, located in her home, to transmit and receive work-related communications during her tenure as secretary of state. As a result, state servers did not capture and store all of the secretary’s emails.”

Judicial Watch's president, Tom Fitton, in a statement claimed that a further investigation of Benghazi-related materials could unearth more in-depth answers.

“This major court ruling may finally result in more answers about the Benghazi scandal—and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in it — as we approach the attack’s fifth anniversary,” the statement read. “It is remarkable that we had to battle both the Obama and Trump administrations to break through the State Department’s Benghazi stonewall. Why are Secretary Tillerson and Attorney General Sessions wasting taxpayer dollars protecting Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration?”

Mehta required a status update on the investigation dated for Sept. 22.