A top Hillary Clinton aide is at the center of a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog group, which claims the U.S. State Department hid emails it was required to hand over as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. On Wednesday Daily Mail Online reported that Huma Abedin, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff and a member of her inner circle, had a private address on the now-infamous email server Clinton kept at her Chappaqua, New York home and used exclusively while she was in office. One day later Judicial Watch, a center-right group known for blanketing Washington with FOIA requests, has demanded that a federal court reopen a case it agreed to drop last year because Abedin's emails were never properly searched. Chris Farrell, the group's research and investigations director, told Daily Mail Online on Thursday that nine more closed cases could be reopened in light of Clinton's email-gate scandal. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS AND THE LEGAL PETITION . MOTHER FIGURE: Former State Department Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Huma Abedin (right) traveled with Hillary Clinton and was seen as one of her closest aides . Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin had an email address on the former secretary of state's private server, judging from records maintained by Lexis-Nexis . In all, Judicial Watch has filed 18 FOIA lawsuits against the State Department, 'all of which are being carefully considered in light of Mrs. Clinton’s and the department’s misconduct and misrepresentations,' Farrell said. 'More strong legal action will follow. Stay tuned,' he added . At the time the Abedin lawsuit was wending its way through federal court, the State Department said in writing that it had exhaustively searched its archives and provided everything Judicial Watch asked for. But with the revelation of a separate email address, the group is demanding a second bite at the apple. Judge Emmit Sullivan in Washington, D.C. is expected to grant the request: Judicial Watch writes in its filing that the State Department won't fight it. State 'does not oppose reopening the case in this particular circumstance,' the legal filing says. According to federal court rules, a lawsuit can be reopened due to 'fraud, ... misrepresentation, or misconduct by an opposing party.' In its filing, Judicial Watch wrote that the State Department 'represented to Judicial Watch that the records of the Executive Secretariat had been searched.' Tom Fitton, the group's president, said there was misconduct at the State Department and demanded 'immediate court action' 'At no point did the State Department inform Judicial Watch that the Secretary’s emails and the emails of Ms. Abedin and other high level officials could not be searched,' the court petition reads. 'These were misrepresentations.' 'Had Judicial Watch known that the State Department’s search excluded Secretary Clinton’s emails and the emails of Ms. Abedin and other high level officials, Judicial Watch would not have stipulated to the dismissal of this case.' Tom Fitton, the group's president, said Thursday in a statement that 'Hillary Clinton’s misconduct and the resulting fraud by the State Department disrupted and ended our federal FOIA lawsuit about Huma Abedin, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest political associates.' 'Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration concealed records and lied to obstruct a federal court and Judicial Watch from finding out about the secret emails,' he claimed. 'Time is of the essence. Immediate court action is imperative to retrieve, recover and secure these public records from Mrs. Clinton.' Clinton said durign a press conference on Tuesday in New York City that she had deleted more than 30,000 'personal' emails from her 'clintonemail.com' server after determining with no outside input that they were unrelated to her government work. She said nothing about other accounts on the server, including Abedin's. The Federal Records Act puts responsibility for archiving public records on the heads of government agencies – a group that included Clinton while she ran the Obama administration's State Department for four years. 'Secretary Clinton plainly violated her own legal obligations,' Judicial Watch said in a press release. 'Doing so was misconduct.' There's no indication that Thursday's legal petition was a response to Daily Mail Online's expose a day earlier. But the State Department's Office of General Counsel could soon have its hands full. The Associated Press said Wednesday that it, too had sued the agency to force the release of emails and other government documents from the years Clinton was at the helm. Some of the AP's requests and demands dated back five years. And the State Department's Office of Inspector General found this week that it had retained just 61,000 emails, out of more than 1 billion sent by the agency's employees, in 2011 – in the middle of Clinton's tenure. Motion to Reopen Huma Abedin Case uploaded by DailyMail.com .
Huma Abedin has been Hillary Clinton's closest aide for years and is seen in Washington as the former secretary of state's adopted daughter . MailOnline reported Wednesday that Abedin had a private address on an email server controlled by Clinton but never indexed by the State Dept . Judicial Watch agreed to drop a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over Abedin's records last year after State said it had handed everything over . Court rules say the suit can be reopened for 'fraud ... misrepresentation or misconduct'; Judicial Watch filed papers on Thursday . State Department 'does not oppose reopening the case,' according to the new legal petition, and there could be at least NINE more like it .