John J. Vecchione, Esq.,  Acting President and CEO of Cause of Action Institute and legal advisor for the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), successfully argued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit a case that would require Secretary of State John Kerry to seek the help of the attorney general in recovering additional Hillary Clinton emails.

The appellate ruling reverses a decision in which the District Court declared “moot” a Judicial Watch’s lawsuit challenging the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry to comply with the Federal Records Act (FRA) in seeking to recover the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other high level State Department officials who used non-“state.gov” email accounts to conduct official business (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. John F. Kerry (No. 16-5015)). According to the FRA, if an agency head becomes aware of “any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal . . . or destruction of [agency] records,” he or she “shall notify the Archivist . . . and with the assistance of the Archivist shall initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of [those] records.”