Judge denies request to depose Clinton

(CNN) — A federal judge denied Friday a request by the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch to depose Hillary Clinton over her email server.

The judge, Emmet Sullivan, did, however, grant Judicial Watch permission to submit written questions to Clinton, which she will have to answer under oath within 30 days.

Separately, Sullivan denied Judicial Watch’s request to depose an official in the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act office, Clarence Finney, but approved their request to depose a former IT official, John Bentel.

Sullivan heard arguments on the deposition requests at a lengthy motion hearing in July.

At the time, he seemed skeptical that more substantive information could be gleaned from a deposition, given Clinton’s numerous public statements on the subject of her email server, as well as her closed testimony to the FBI and open testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

Clinton has repeatedly said she set up the private server during her tenure leading the State Department for convenience and wasn’t attempting to evade FOIA, though she also called the decision “a mistake.”