FBI trove yields one new Clinton Benghazi email

The FBI recently unearthed only one new email regarding the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State, according to a new report.

Government lawyers said in a court filing early Wednesday that the message is the sole revelation from a trove of 30 recovered by the agency last month, Politico said.

{mosads}Politico said the email is a flattering note sent by a veteran U.S. diplomat after Clinton testified on Benghazi before a Senate panel in 2013.

“I watched with great admiration as she dealt with a tough and personally painful issue in a fair, candid and determined manner,” then-U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Thomas Shannon wrote in a message to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then-chief of staff at State.

“I was especially impressed by her ability to turn aside the obvious efforts to politicize the events in Benghazi, reminding Americans of the tremendous sacrifice made by [then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya] Chris Stevens and his colleagues but also insisting that our ability to play a positive role in the world and protect U.S. interests requires a willingness to take risks.”

Mills ultimately forwarded Shannon’s kind words to Clinton, who is now the Democratic presidential nominee.

Politico also said it is unclear why the email from Shannon was not produced in previous searches or among the roughly 30,000 emails Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and gave to State two years ago.

“In response to a Benghazi-related [Freedom of Information Act] request, after completing its review of the set of documents previously identified as potentially responsive, State has determined that there is one responsive document that is not a duplicate of the documents provided by former Secretary Clinton in December 2014 and that had not been previously provided to Judicial Watch in this case,” State spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday.

“The email does not change the facts that have previously been made clear about the Benghazi attacks,” Toner added of the Sept. 11, 2012, incident that killed Stevens and three other Americans.

The FBI recovered about 30 Benghazi-related emails out of the 14,900 messages deleted from Clinton’s private email server.

The agency has committed to releasing the newly uncovered documents under a series of requests from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

The FBI first must assess whether the messages are work-related or personal, however. Some may also be duplicates of thousands of communications it has already released.

Critics say Clinton’s use of a personal storage device may have prevented accountability of her tenure at State or jeopardized sensitive national intelligence.