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Cheryl Mills' filing asserts that audio or video clips would be more easily taken out of context than a transcript | AP Photo

By Josh Gerstein

05/25/16 05:42 PM EDT

Updated 05/25/16 06:30 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, is asking a federal judge to order a conservative group not to release audio or video recordings of a deposition Mills is scheduled to give Friday about Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

Mills' attorneys filed a motion Wednesday afternoon saying they fear that the group that sought Mills' deposition in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch, will use any recording to distort Mills' testimony and advance the group's anti-Clinton agenda.

"We are concerned 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," attorneys Beth Wilkinson and Alexandra Walsh wrote in the motion submitted to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. "Ms. Mills is not a party to this action. She is a private citizen appearing voluntarily to assist in providing the limited discovery the Court has permitted. ... Judicial Watch should not be allowed to manipulate Ms. Mills testimony, and invade her personal privacy, to advance a partisan agenda that should have nothing to do with this litigation."

The motion says Mills has no objection to releasing the transcript of her testimony, although the State Department has said it may object if the testimony strays into areas that are supposed to be off-limits according to the judge's order permitting the deposition.

Mills' filing asserts that audio or video clips would be more easily taken out of context than a transcript but does not make entirely clear why written quotes could not be similarly distorted.

Sullivan issued an order shortly after the motion was filed giving the conservative group until noon Thursday to offer a formal response to the motion.

A spokeswoman for Judicial Watch said the group is evaluating the motion and will respond by the judge's deadline.

In addition to Mills, former Clinton deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and computer technician Bryan Pagliano are scheduled to give depositions in the coming weeks. It's unclear whether any limits put on videos of Mills' testimony would be applied to their appearances, but if the judge agrees to Mills' request it seems likely the others would ask for similar treatment.

One current State Department official gave a deposition last week, and several others are expected to do so over the next month or so in accordance with an order Sullivan issued earlier this month.

Sullivan has left open the possibility of calling Clinton for a deposition in the case. Judicial Watch has already formally asked a judge handling a parallel case to order Clinton to give testimony, but there's been no ruling on that request.

UPDATE (Wednesday, 6:17 p.m.): This post has been updated with Sullivan's scheduling order, comment from Judicial Watch and additional context.

Josh Gerstein is a senior reporter for POLITICO.

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Hillary Clinton aide moves to block release of deposition ...

John Locher/Associated Press Hillary Clinton spoke at a rally at Hartnell College on Wednesday in Salinas, Calif.

For more than a year, Hillary Clinton has traveled the country talking to voters about her policy plans. She vowed to improve infrastructure in her first 100 days in office, promised to increase funding for Alzheimers research and proposed a $10 billion plan to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

But as the Democratic primary contest comes to a close, any hopes Mrs. Clinton had of running a high-minded, policy-focused campaign have collided with a more visceral problem.

Voters just dont trust her.

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The Clinton campaign had hoped to use the coming weeks to do everything they could to shed that image and convince voters that Mrs. Clinton can be trusted. Instead, they must contend with a damaging new report by the State Departments inspector general that Mrs. Clinton had not sought or received approval to use a private email server while she was secretary of state.

It is not just that the inspector general found fault with her email practices. The report speaks directly to a wounding perception that Mrs. Clinton is not forthright or transparent.

After months of saying she used a private email for convenience, and that she was willing to cooperate fully with investigations into her handling of official business at the State Department, the report, delivered to Congress on Wednesday, undermined both claims.

Mrs. Clinton, through her lawyers, declined to be interviewed by the inspector general as part of the review. And when staff members raised concerns about the wisdom of her using a nongovernment email address, they were hushed by State Department officials, who instructed them never to speak of the secretarys personal email system again.

In November 2010, when a State Department aide requested she release her personal email address or start using an official address, Mrs. Clinton said she was open to using a second device or email address but added,I dont want any risk of the personal being accessible.

Mrs. Clintons allies on Wednesday jumped on the fact that the report also revealed that Colin Powell, the secretary of state under President George W. Bush, and other State Department officials had also exclusively used personal email accounts. The inspector general documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other secretaries and senior officials at the State Department, said Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman.

But Mr. Powell is not running for president against a likely opponent, Donald J. Trump, who has now adopted the drumbeat of Crooked Hillary.

Crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary, shes as crooked as they come, Mr. Trump said at a rally in Anaheim, Calif.

His attacks came as Mrs. Clinton tried to break through with her own criticism that Mr. Trump had profited from the 2008 housing crisis.

But the Clinton campaigns new effort to define Mr. Trump as a con man who rips off the little guy for his own gain will be met with the trickle of new developments related to Mrs. Clintons private email. The F.B.I. is separately investigating whether Mrs. Clinton and her aides exposed sensitive national security information in their email correspondence. She has already turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department.

And Mrs. Clintons campaign has struggled to put the issue behind her. Mrs. Clinton spent much of last summer insisting she did not need to apologize for keeping a private server in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. because the practice was allowed. Then, in September, she offered a tortured apology, acknowledging in an interview with ABC News that using a private email server had been a mistake. She added, Im sorry about that.

Mrs. Clinton has long contended that voters care more about issues like equal pay for women, widely available child care, and making college more affordable than how she handled her emails as secretary of state. Even her Democratic primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, tried to squelch the storm over the private server during the first Democratic debate last fall.

But something has seeped into the electorate. A presidential campaign always contends with incoming fire, but it is also designed to serve as an infomercial to present a candidates best attributes. Instead, Mrs. Clinton has gone from a 69 percent approval rating and one of the most popular public figures in the country when she left the State Department in 2013 to having one of the highest disapproval ratings of any likely presidential nominee of a major party.

Roughly 53 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mrs. Clinton in a new ABC-News Washington Post poll. Some 60 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Trump.

When asked if Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump are honest and trustworthy, 64 percent of registered voters replied no, according to a recent New York Times-CBS News poll. Ask voters why they dont trust Mrs. Clinton, and again and again they will answer with a single word: Emails.

I dont believe a word when she says she didnt know what she was doing with those emails, said Debbie Figel, 57. She plans to vote for Mr. Trump.

This email business really concerns me, said John Dunn, 58 of Oneida, N.Y.

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

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Emails Add to Hillary Clintons Central Problem: Voters Just ...

Amid a storm of outrage and criticism, George Zimmerman on Monday explained publicly for the first time why he auctioned off the pistol he used to kill unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin during an altercation in 2012.

The former neighborhood-watch volunteer, who was acquitted of second-degree murder in July of 2013, said he auctioned off his 9-mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol for $250,000. He promised to use some of the proceeds to push back against the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter, which has risen in popularity in the wake of the deaths of Martin and other unarmed black victims of gun and police violence.

A Black Lives Matter community Facebook page has over 130,000 "likes" and uses as its cover page an illustration of an activist wearing a black hood, symbolic of the protests that erupted after 17-year-old Martin was killed by Zimmerman near his Florida home.

Speaking Monday to ABC Las Vegas affiliate KTNV-TV via Skype between puffs from a thick cigar, Zimmerman struck a pose of defiance, discussing the process of auctioning the gun and accusing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton of pandering to the black community to get votes.

"I was tired of Hillary Clinton's anti-gun rhetoric," Zimmerman said of his rationale for auctioning off the pistol. "She has been stumping around for a false campaign for the Trayvon Martin Foundation. She lied, saying that I killed him when he was walking home in his daddy's neighborhood. Which if anyone watched more than seven minutes of the trial, they would know that is false."

The unarmed Martin was visiting his father's fiancee's neighborhood and was returning from a convenience store before the deadly encounter with Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense.

Zimmerman said he would use some of the proceeds to help police who were targeted by violence.

"I am going to donate to officers such as the deputy in Texas that was shot in the head at point-blank range for no other reason than he was in uniform," Zimmerman said, referring to Alden Clopton, a police officer who was shot four times ambush-style and survived.

"No one can replace his life. No one can replace the service he was doing to his community. My goal is to attempt to make his family as whole as possible again."

The gun's auctioneer did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for confirmation of the sale price.

Zimmerman has been savaged by critics from the moment he announced his desire to auction off the pistol. Shaun King, a prominent civil rights activist and surrogate of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, penned an op-ed in The New York Daily News calling Zimmerman "injustice in the flesh."

"He is the living, breathing, walking, talking personification of injustice. He is injustice in the flesh. It nauseates us. It infuriates us. It takes us somewhere, emotionally, where we don't want to go, but we can't help it," King wrote.

This is not the first time Zimmerman has provoked outrage since being acquitted of murdering Martin. In 2015 he generated headlines for retweeting an image of Martin's corpse.

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George Zimmerman Explains His Rationale for Auctioning ...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is proposing to change how suppressors are marked, leaving trade groups and manufacturers puzzled.

Ted Nugent has been re-elected to the board of directors of the NRA. Is his persona and reputation a benefit or a harm to gun rights?

The couple came by the home the day before claiming to have car trouble, but a review of surveillance video shows the female scoping out the property.

An LGBT gun rights group is firing back at Gavin Newsom over comments he made on social media bashing opposition from the within the Trans community to his gun control push.

For Second Amendment advocates, the gun-free zone is an easy target for would-be bad guys, a fish-in-a-barrel proposition giving them easy access to a large amount of victims in one convenient package.

The 145th National Rifle Associations Annual Meeting and Exhibits last week in Louisville was the largest since 2013 and came close to breaking the organizations record.

Among the 25 people announced to serve new three-year terms on the National Rifle Associations board last weekend was controversial rocker Ted Nugent.

A Maryland man who was elected as a delegate for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was arrested on machine gun and child pornography charges.

As with Obama, we have a long record of Clintons statements about gun rights. We can work out her attitude and intentions on this subject.

The Assembly will soon take up a legislative package pushed by the states powerful Senate President in an effort to beat Lt. Governor Gavin Newsoms ballot initiative to a gun control knockout blow.

Link:
Politics & 2nd Amendment Archives - Guns.com

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