I'm no Aligator Ed, but here's my stab at this:

Judicial Watch Statement on State Department’s and Hillary Clinton’s Opposition to Deposition of Clinton, Finney and Bentel

JULY 12, 2016

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the State Department’s and Secretary Clinton’s oppositions to Judicial Watch’s request for permission to depose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others:

It is no surprise that neither Hillary Clinton nor the Obama State Department agrees with our request to depose Mrs. Clinton.

What is notable is that the State Department finally admits that Clinton’s practice of supposedly emailing other State officials using her non-state.gov account was not an “appropriate method of preserving federal records or making them available for searches under FOIA.”

Second, it is both significant and disturbing that Hillary Clinton now asserts a private “claim of right” over her non-state.gov email account, including any of the 55,000 pages of federal records she returned to the State Department. She further claims that these and other emails, including emails that may have contained classified information, have “never been the property of or in the possession or control of the State Department.”

On July 8 Judicial Watch submitted a request for permission to depose Clinton; the Director of Office of Correspondence and Records of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-CRM”) Clarence Finney; and the former Director of Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-IRM”) John Bentel. The request arises in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit before U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).

Soon after Judicial Watch submitted its request for further discovery, the court ordered the State Department and Mrs. Clinton to respond by today. Judicial Watch’s reply is due to the court on Thursday, July 14. A hearing is set for Monday, July 18, 2016.

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PDF of State Department filing - 28 pages. Here's the nub of the response:

The fundamental question for the discovery authorized by the Court is thus whether there is evidence of intent to thwart FOIA.

snip

Plaintiff’s motion should be denied. Plaintiff has not demonstrated a need for additional discovery, which as the Court recognized when it ordered limited discovery in this case, is rare in FOIA cases... Plaintiff’s motion presents a selective explanation of the evidence. Contrary to Plaintiff’s vague contention that “important questions remain,” the discovery that Plaintiff itself designed has not revealed a shred of evidence indicating an intent to thwart FOIA. To the contrary, documents that might have been interpreted as reflecting a concern about FOIA have been shown, through sworn testimony, to have a much more innocuous explanation. Nor have any of the other inquiries into former Secretary Clinton’s email practices, conducted by the FBI, the State Department’s Inspector General, and the House Select Committee on Benghazi, discovered any evidence of an intent to thwart FOIA. Plaintiff has an answer to the question it posed; it just does not like it. Plaintiff’s dissatisfaction with the record that it has been able to create is not a valid reason to extend the limited discovery the Court authorized.

Although Plaintiff seeks only three additional depositions, none is justified. With respect to former Secretary Clinton, the record evidence does not demonstrate any intent to thwart FOIA. According to the sworn testimony, the Secretary had, as a matter of convenience, used a single personal email account for work and personal purposes both during her time in the Senate and in her 2008 presidential campaign, and her use of a personal account at State was simply a continuation of that practice. To the extent that she or anyone on her staff considered the FOIA implications of her use of a personal email account, the evidence elicited by Plaintiffs shows that they believed that her emails to State Department employees were being retained on the State Department’s computer systems.

Plaintiff also cannot justify deposing Mr. Finney. It is undisputed that Mr. Finney never knew about former Secretary Clinton’s personal email account during her tenure as Secretary of State, and Plaintiff’s suggestion that Mr. Finney could testify about “why” he did not know what he did not know makes no sense. Moreover, Mr. Finney’s supervisor Karin Lang, the Director of the Executive Secretariat Staff, was State’s 30(b)(6) designee, and she testified at length about Mr. Finney’s lack of knowledge based upon her multiple hours of meetings with him in preparation for her deposition. Questions about what Mr. Finney knew and how that related to State’s processing of FOIA requests fell squarely within the 30(b)(6) deposition topic, and the questions that Plaintiff seeks to ask through a deposition of Mr. Finney should have been asked at that time.

A deposition of John Bentel, who is no longer an employee of the State Department, would also be inappropriate. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Bentel has any knowledge about why former Secretary Clinton used clintonemail.com for official State Department business, and he in fact stated, under penalty of perjury, during a transcribed interview with the House Select Committee on Benghazi in 2015 that he has no such knowledge.

Here's how that section concludes - notice the last line:

With all the discovery authorized by the Court completed, there remains no evidence that the State Department or former Secretary Clinton used clintonemail.com to thwart FOIA and no basis to believe that the additional discovery that Plaintiff seeks would result in any such evidence. The Court should deny Plaintiff’s request to depose former Secretary Clinton, Mr. Finney, and Mr. Bentel. In the alternative, the Court should defer ruling on Plaintiff’s motion because additional State Department records may be received by State.

Do Tell!

The next section is titled "Background," which suggests that enough already, there's been a State Dept Inspector General report released, we've had way too much Benghazi hearing stuff going on where most of the witnesses also testified, and then Comey testified to a Congressional committee. We have no more to give.

But then at the end of the Background section explains the cryptic remark above:

On July 8, State sent a letter to Director Comey asking the FBI to provide the recovered work-related emails to State. July 8 letter from Undersecretary Kennedy to Director Comey, attached hereto as Ex. 1

The exhibit is the last page of this document and is a letter from Patrick Kennedy to Director Comey asking him to hand over to State what he had testified to Congress has been found outside of the emails turned over by the Clinton attorneys.

* * *

PDF of JW v State Clinton Deposition Opposition 01363 - 187 pages

Here's the heading on the document:

NON-PARTY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON’S
OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO DEPOSE
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, CLARENCE FINNEY, AND JOHN BENTEL

Despite this public testimony and the various investigative reports, Judicial Watch claims that it needs to depose Secretary Clinton, a former Cabinet Secretary, about six purportedly unan-swered questions. The record, however, already answers those questions or makes clear that Sec-retary Clinton has no personal knowledge to provide. And many of Judicial Watch’s proposed In any event, the discovery requested by Judicial Watch is futile.

The ostensible purpose of the requested discovery is to determine whether this Court should compel Secretary Clinton to produce her @clintonemail.com account (including any personal e-mail) from her private e-mail server equipment to the State Department for further searching in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request. Even if this Court had authority to issue such unprecedented relief, Secretary Clinton has nothing to produce, as the server equipment used to host her @clintonemail.com account is in the possession of the FBI.

Finally, for the sake of preserving any and all rights, counsel to Secretary Clinton respect-fully submit that discovery is unwarranted in this case as a general matter. Under Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136 (1980), this Court lacks jurisdiction to compel disclosure of documents on Secretary Clinton’s private server equipment—irrespective of any alleged intent to “thwart” FOIA—because those documents were outside the State Department’s possession or control when Judicial Watch submitted its FOIA request.

I'm not an attorney and I do not play one on teevee, but, if I understand the argument here, it's that OF COURSE she wasn't trying to avoid FOIA by keeping her emails out of the possession of the State Department, but excuse you very much, you, big, bad court, YOU have no jurisdiction in this matter because these records are not and never have been at the State Department and are therefore not discoverable by you or the FOIA you rode in on!

Wow.

Here's the full text of the section entitled, "Argument" which re-states some of what has been covered above and elsewhere (page 9):

Judicial Watch has not demonstrated a need to depose Secretary Clinton, a former Cabinet Secretary. Although Judicial Watch identifies six questions it would like to ask Secretary Clinton, the voluminous record available to Judicial Watch—which includes Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony—answers many of those questions. The remainder are irrelevant to the narrow issue on which limited discovery was permitted. The requested deposition, moreover, would be an exercise in futility. No matter how much discovery Judicial Watch takes, the ultimate relief it seeks production and search of Secretary Clinton’s clintonemail.com account by either the State Depart-ment or Secretary Clinton—is impossible to obtain in this case, as Secretary Clinton does not have possession or control of the equipment that housed that account. Finally, this Court lacks jurisdic-tion to order the requested discovery. Because the State Department did not possess or control the e-mail account when Judicial Watch submitted the at-issue request (or at any time subsequent to the request), it could not withhold e-mails from that account even if, as Judicial Watch incorrectly claims, there was an intent to “thwart” FOIA generally.

It goes on to say that the reason Secretary Clinton used her own server was because she'd used her own email when she was in the senate and wanted to 'continue' that practice, that it has already been explained this is for convenience, and you've got no bloody evidence that it was to thwart FOIA. Plus, nobody made her stop, so obviously it was fine with the Department!

Obviously, there's no 'reasonable person' standard for this kind of court-related exchange:

Judicial Watch also claims that it needs to know why Secretary Clinton continued using the clintonemail.com system despite supposed problems and disruptions. Its underlying assumption—that the clintonemail.com system had more problems than the state.gov system—is not supported by the record. Ms. Abedin has testified that there were just as many technical issues with the state.gov system as with the clintonemail.com system.

Interesting that she's held up as an authority on this subject. And is this really an apples to apples comparison since Secretary Clinton did not even attempt to use a State Dept email for herself?

They attempt to make quick work of the pesky email which suggested that Clinton was trying to keep private stuff off the books:

Although Judicial Watch highlights an e-mail to Ms. Abedin mentioning that a State-issued Blackberry would be subject to FOIA...Ms. Abedin testified that she did not “remember discussing this with the Secretary.

Well, that's sure convenient. I guess seeing the email did not refresh her memory.

More specifically:

Judicial Watch identifies only one communication involving Secretary Clinton, but that document disproves any intent to thwart FOIA. When Ms. Abedin suggested that Secretary Clinton obtain a state.gov e-mail address in 2010, the Secretary did not express concern that her work-related e-mails would be subject to FOIA...She stated only that she did not want her “personal” e-mails to be accessible.

So, um, the only POSSIBLE proof would apparently be that Clinton said directly that she was attempting to avoid FOIA, because anyone attempting to avoid FOIA would state that unequivocally. Let's hope the judge does not think We The People are as stoopid as Clinton knows us to be.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, she doesn't work there anymore so you can't make her do anything, and other court cases were about current employees... and then here we have it again - the State Department can't give you what it's never had:

That e-mail account, which was hosted on private server equipment, was possessed privately under a claim of right, and has never been the property of or in the possession or control of the State Department.

WOULD AN ATTORNEY OUT THERE PLEASE EXPLAIN "CLAIM OF RIGHT" for us, please?

No, the Secretary wasn't trying to keep this from the public... but get your grubby paws away from HER work materials which you'll never see as long as you live!

Or maybe it's more, "I'll get you, my pretty... and your little dog, too:"

Judicial Watch further claims that it needs to know whether Secretary Clinton deleted work-related e-mails during her tenure as Secretary—i.e., before Judicial Watch submitted its FOIA request. That question is irrelevant to this FOIA case. FOIA does not obligate agencies to retain records; the obligation to retain records arises from the Federal Records Act, which does not confer a private right of action Finally, Judicial Watch claims that it needs to know Secretary Clinton’s understanding of her FOIA obligations, but Secretary Clinton has already testified to that very issue.

It may or may not be irrelevant to this case, but I think they want that for the perjury and impeachment discussions... inquiring minds may want to know...

It gets more painful - I certainly do not have Ed's stamina:

Judicial Watch further argues that it needs information about Secretary Clinton’s “inven-torying of records” at the end of her tenure... It highlights a “meeting between [Clarence] Finney, Ms. Abedin and other personnel from the Office of the Secretary about what records Secretary Clinton and her staff were allowed to take with them when they left the State Department.” But Secretary Clinton was not at that meeting... Moreover, Secretary Clinton was not the person inventorying her records. Her staff was performing that task.

I've got an appointment, so that's as much as I can eke out before I go...