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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 ...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton doubled down on defending her email practices as Secretary of State, arguing that the use of a personal account was allowed, and rules have since been clarified.

This report makes clear that personal email use was the practice for other secretaries of state, Clinton told ABC News in an interview in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was allowed. And the rules have been clarified since I left.

Yesterday, a report released by the State Departments Office of Inspector General said that Clinton shouldn't have used a private email server to conduct official business and would have not been allowed to do so had she asked. It also found that she should have turned over emails after her tenure and violated department policy.

She has faced the issue for more than a year as she battles to become the Democratic nominee.

Clinton explained why she did not cooperate with State Department investigators, despite repeatedly saying she would talk to anyone, anytime about her emails.

"I have talked about this for many, many months," she said. "I testified for 11 hours before the Benghazi committee. I have answered numerous questions. We have posted information on our website and the information that we had is out there. Its been clearly public and my email use was widely known throughout the department, throughout the government, and I have provided all of my work related emails, and Ive asked that they be made public."

Clinton has not been charged with a crime and her spokesman, Brian Fallon, said the former secretary's email use was in line with former secretaries of state. He also said that political opponents were using the report in a misleading way.

Ive said many times, if I could go back, I would do it differently," she told ABC News. "I know people have concerns about this.

Clinton also weighed in on a potential debate between Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump and her main rival, Bernie Sanders.

Well, I understood they said that was a joke, Clinton quipped, adding Im gonna look forward to debating Donald Trump.

In an interview on ABCs "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Trump said if he and Sanders had a one-on-one they would have high ratings.

The Vermont senator quickly responded on Twitter, writing, "Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary."

When asked if she has reached out to the Sanders campaign in an effort to unify the party, Clinton said both campaigns are certainly communicating.

I know that were both trying to do our best in the upcoming contest, but I have every reason to believe that after June 7th, we will begin to unify the Democratic party, Clinton said.

Clinton also opened the door to party concessions, saying she and Sanders are going to talk about everything.

Were gonna go into the convention unified, were gonna come out even more unified, and were going to defeat Donald Trump in November.

The Democratic front-runner also didn't dismiss the idea of changing her platform to a $15 minimum wage. "Were gonna have those conversations at the platform committee," she said. (Clinton is for a $12 federal min wage with $15 in some cities. Sanders is for $15 nationwide).

Back in April, Clinton told MSNBCs Rachel Maddow that she shouldnt need to make conditions for Sanders to support her. "I did not put down conditions," Clinton said. "I didn't say, 'You know what, if Senator Obama does x, y and z, maybe I'll support him."

ABCs Justin Fishel and Cecilia Vega contributed to this report.

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Hillary Clinton Doubles Down on Email Scandal, Saying 'It ...

The Inspector General's office said on May 25 that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email account was "not an appropriate method" for preserving those emails. (Peter Stevenson,Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

One of the two big dominoes in the Hillary Clinton email controversy toppled today: The State Departments inspector general released its report on the email practices of Clinton and a number of other past secretaries of state. (The other major domino is, of course, the FBI investigation into Clintons decision to exclusively use a private email server while serving as the nations top diplomat.)

The report, which you can read in its entirety here, badly complicates Clintons past explanations about the server and whether she complied fully with the laws in place governing electronic communication. And it virtually ensures that Clintons email practices will be front and center in Donald Trumps fusillade of attacks against her credibility and honesty between now and Nov. 8.

Heres the key passage from the Roz Helderman and Tom Hamburger articleon the report:

The inspector general, in a long-awaited review obtained Wednesday by The Washington Post in advance of its publication, found that Clintons use of private email for public business was not an appropriate method of preserving documents and that her practices failed to comply with department policies meant to ensure that federal record laws are followed.

The report says Clinton, who is the Democratic presidential front-runner, should have printed and saved her emails during her four years in office or surrendered her work-related correspondence immediately upon stepping down in February 2013. Instead, Clinton provided those records in December 2014, nearly two years after leaving office.

Clinton used an inappropriate method of preserving her documents. Her approach would not have been approved if it had been requested by a more junior member of the State Department staff. The report also suggests that despite a Clinton aides insistence that the method of preserving her emails had been submitted to a legal review back in 2010, there is no evidence that such a review took place. And, heres the kicker: Clinton refused to sit for a formal interview.

Oomph. Double oomph. Heck, that might merit a triple oomph.

The Clinton campaign will push back hard on this report as it hasagainst anything that suggests she was at all in the wrong inthe creation and protection of her email server. Here's how her press secretary, Brian Fallon, put it on Twitter:

Clintons team has spent months casting the State Department inspector generals office as overly aggressive and working hand in hand with congressional Republicans to cast the former secretary of state in the worst possible light.

Thats a very hard story to sell, given that the current inspector general was appointed by President Obama. Itis,by the way, the same problem Clinton faces when she tries to cast skepticism on the ongoing FBI investigation. This is an FBI that is overseen by an attorney general Loretta E. Lynch who was also appointed by Obama. Its tough to make the case that a Democratic administration filled with Democratic appointees are all somehow out to get the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Then there is the argument, which Fallon makes above, that Clinton was far from the first secretary of state to use less-than-airtight methods to ensure the preservation and security of her email correspondence. As the IG report makes clear, she wasnt. Again, Helderman and Hamburger:

The 83-page report reviews email practices by five secretaries of state and generally concludes that recordkeeping has been spotty for years.

It was particularly critical of former secretary of state Colin Powell who has acknowledged publicly that he used a personal email account to conduct business concluding that he too failed to follow department policy designed to comply with public-record laws.

There are two very important differences among Clinton, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, and former secretariesPowell and Condoleezza Rice when it comes to email practices.

The first is that Clinton is the first and, to date, only secretary of state to exclusively use a private email address and server to conduct her business as the nations top diplomat. All of the other names above maintained both a private and a government-issued email address. That alone doesnt make her guilty. But it does make her unique.

Second, Clinton is the only one of that group who is currently (a) running for president and (b) the very likely nominee for one of the countrys two major parties.

A spokesman for the State Department said May 25 that the department "could have done a better job" of preserving email records of former secretaries. The news conference comes after State Department inspector general criticized Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email practices. (Reuters)

Because of her elevated status in our political world, she is and should be subject to more scrutiny than, say, Powell, who hasnt voiced an interest in running for president in 20 years. Thats particularly true because Clinton has put her time at State at the center of her argument for why she should be elected the 45th president of the United States. Look at what I have done and judge me by it, she says. That has to include the bad as well as the good.

This is a bad day for Clintons presidential campaign. Period. For a candidate already struggling to overcome a perception that she is neither honest nor trustworthy, the IG report makes that task significantly harder. No one will come out of this news cycle with the exception of the hardest of the hard-core Clinton people believing she is a better bet for the presidency on May 25 than she was on May 23.

Clinton remains blessed that Republicans are on the verge of nominating Donald Trump, a candidate whose numbers on honesty, trustworthiness and evenreadiness to lead are worse and in some cases, far worse than hers. But Trumps task of casting her as Crooked Hillary just got easier.

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Hillary Clintons email problems just got much worse - The ...

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Issues | Hillary for America

"He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump University," the likely Democratic presidential nominee said at an event Wednesday in Newark, New Jersey.

The attacks Clinton unleashed against Trump are among her sharpest of the campaign -- reflecting a belief that Trump University is a major vulnerability for the presumptive GOP nominee and that Trump is likely to be goaded into a response that would keep the issue alive.

Clinton pointed to documents unsealed by a judge Tuesday in a lawsuit over Trump University.

"His own employees testified that Trump U -- you can't make this up -- that Trump U was a fraudulent scheme where Donald Trump enriched himself at the expense of hard working people," Clinton said.

"Trump and his employees took advantage of vulnerable Americans encouraging them to max out their credit cards, empty their retirement savings, destroy their financial futures, all while making promises they knew were false from the beginning," she said. "This is just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud. He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump University."

It's the latest attack Clinton has unleashed against Trump after blasting his record on veterans this week and his years-old comments about how he'd profit from the housing crisis last week. She said his actions demonstrate that Trump is "unqualified and unfit" for the presidency.

Tuesday afternoon, Trump's campaign released a video highlighting what it said were former students praising their experiences at Trump University.

"I must tell you that the courses that I took were outstanding," Kent Moyer, one of the students, says in the clip.

The Clinton campaign's criticism of Trump University began with a lengthy attack on Twitter, where Clinton's official account labeled the school a "fraud" and a "scam."

Her shots at Trump University included retweeting 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that Trump is "is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University."

The school is now defunct and what remains is called the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.

"Confident that voters don't know enough about Trump U yet. So expect to hear quite a bit more from us on this topic," Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri tweeted.

Clinton's press secretary, Brian Fallon, tweeted, "Trump U is devastating because it's metaphor for his whole campaign: promising hardworking Americans way to get ahead, but all based on lies."

In another tweet, Clinton included a warning, saying: "Caution -- may cause nausea."

That was the starting point of a Clinton tweetstorm.

"The gist: Trump's for-profit university deceived & exploited students to take their money," her account tweeted. "And he has the gall to call the media 'sleazy.'"

Then, she tweeted: "Some of Trump University's tactics: push people to take on debt, cash out retirement, max out credit cardswhatever it took to buy classes."

She continued: "Some of Trump University's tactics: push people to take on debt, cash out retirement, max out credit cardswhatever it took to buy classes."

"Another Trump University practice, according to its own employees: target struggling families to fleece them," Clinton tweeted. "Trump University employed instructors with no experience and lied to sell outrageously expensive packages. In a word: fraud."

And, she said, "It's one thing to sell steaks using a name as a marketing ploy. Trump's company intentionally put people at risk."

Then, Clinton's Twitter feed transitioned into a broader attack on Trump -- arguing that "Trump's candidacy is built on his business 'credibility.' But his business record matches his character: His only concern is his own profit."

"The Trump University con says a lot about Trump," Clinton wrote. "If you can't trust him with your personal financeshow can we trust him with our country?"

The Twitter attack from Clinton's account didn't include any comments signed "-H" -- an indicator that the message came from Clinton herself.

For his part, Trump has defended his namesake business school, blaming the judge in the case in a news conference Tuesday.

"I have a judge who is very, very unfair. He knows he's unfair. And I'll win the Trump University case," he said. "I could settle that case. I could have settled it. I just choose not to. In fact, when I ran, they said, 'Why don't you settle up that case?' I don't want to settle the case."

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Hillary Clinton blasts Trump University, calls GOP rival a ...