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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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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 ...

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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