Judicial Watch Seeks Testimony of Hillary Clinton
First
the good news, the FBI/Justice Department cover-up won’t derail
Judicial Watch’s independent effort to get at the truth about the
Clinton email scandal.
In fact, a few hours ago we submitted to a federal court judge
a request for permission to depose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
We
also asked permission to depose 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.
Our 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)).
Judge Sullivan almost immediately issued a court order,
just as your Weekly Update went to press, scheduling a hearing on the issue on July 18.
As you know, the court previously granted discovery on the clintonemail.com system, and we have deposed seven former Clinton top aides and current State Department officials, including top Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and
Huma Abedin. We also deposed IT official Brian Pagliano, who asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to testify during the deposition.
In granting Judicial Watch’s initial discovery motion, the court ruled
that Judicial Watch may seek permission for Hillary Clinton’s
testimony, if necessary. Today’s brief argues that the Clinton
testimony is necessary:
[Judicial Watch] recognizes the significance of asking a former agency
head and presumptive nominee for president to sit for a deposition. As
the primary driving force behind and principal user of the clintonemail.com
system, however, Secretary Clinton’s testimony is crucial to
understanding how and why the system was created and operated. It also
is crucial to understanding why the secretary chose to use the system
for all her official email communications, not only initially but also
after the system proved to be so problematic for the department, top
departmental officials, and the secretary herself. Plaintiff has
attempted to obtain as much evidence as possible from other State
Department officials, but Secretary Clinton is an indispensable witness
and significant questions remain, including why records management
officials apparently had no knowledge of the system when so many other
officials used
the system to communicate with her. Consequently, Secretary Clinton’s
deposition is necessary.
Our brief notes, “Although significant progress has been made in uncovering evidence concerning the creation and use of the clintonemail.com
system and the State Department’s approach and practice for processing
FOIA requests potentially implicating Secretary Clinton’s and Ms.
Abedin’s emails, important questions remain.” Our brief also points to
this week’s findings announced by FBI Director James Comey as providing
additional reasons for Clinton’s testimony:
In his statement announcing
the conclusion of the FBI investigation into Clinton’s email practices,
Comey stated, “The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related
e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by
Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.” The FBI’s finding raises questions
about Clinton’s assertions in her August 8, 2015, declaration that she
directed that all her emails on the clintonemail.com
system in her custody “that were or potentially were federal records be
provided to the Department of State” and that “on information and
belief, this has been done.” Clinton’s deposition is necessary to
inquire about the basis of these assertions in light of the FBI’s
finding.
Judicial
Watch alerted the State Department and Justice Department last week
that we would seek this additional testimony from Clinton and others,
but Justice Department lawyers informed us that the State Department
opposes the request.
We
are seeking the testimony of Finney because, as chief Freedom of
Information (FOIA) officer for the Secretary’s office, he “had
day-to-day responsibility for records management and research, including
conducting and coordinating searches in response to FOIA requests,
during Secretary Clinton’s and Ms. Abedin’s tenure.”
We are seeking the deposition of Bentel for several reasons. When asked by his staff about Clinton’s use of a non-state.gov
email account to conduct government business, “Mr. Bentel instructed
them not to discuss the issue. As a result, obtaining Mr. Bentel’s
testimony is essential to determine what he knew, when he knew it, and
why he did not share the information with the appropriate State
Department employees responsible for responding to FOIA requests.”
Hillary
Clinton can answer questions about her email practices that no other
witness can. Her testimony will help the court determine if, how, and
why FOIA was thwarted by the Clinton email system.
Judicial Watch has a separate request for Clinton’s testimony pending before U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, who ruled on March 29 that
“where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as
here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly
rare in FOIA cases.”
FBI Director Undermines the Rule of Law
Shamefully ignoring the law, FBI Director James B. Comey recommended
that the Department of Justice not indict Hillary Clinton for the disclosure of classified information on her non-state.gov email. Sure enough, Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch closed the investigation without charges the next day.
Comey
first detailed Clinton’s massive destruction of government records and
grossly negligent handling of classified information. But then came an
enormous disconnect between these devastating findings and Comey’s weak
recommendation not to prosecute.
Chris Farrell, JW’s Director of Investigations & Research, spelled out Hillary Clinton’s email crimes in detail for The Hill.
Comey provided the following detailed examples of how Mrs. Clinton violated the law:
- “110
e-mails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to
contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.
Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the
time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time;
and eight contained Confidential information.”
-
Comey charged that former Secretary of State Clinton (and her
colleagues), “were extremely careless in their handling of very
sensitive, highly classified information.” And he confirmed that, “any
reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of
those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these
matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for
that conversation.”
-
With respect to Mrs. Clinton’s culpability in compromising national
defense information to hostile actors, Mr. Comey stated: “We do assess
that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email
accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact
from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use
of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people
and readily apparent.
- She
also used her personal email extensively while outside the United
States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the
territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of
factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to
Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”
By not acting on these charges, Comey has torpedoed his bureau’s reputation. As I wrote for Fox News:
According to Comey’s testimony before the House, the Hillary Clinton
lies, subterfuge, document destruction and national security violations
that would, for starters, get you or any other non-political elitist
drummed out of the FBI, shouldn’t even be considered for prosecution by a
“reasonable prosecutor.” Well, not if that “reasonable prosecutor” owes
his meal ticket and position of power to the likes (and dislikes) of
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
What
was perhaps most striking about Comey’s testimony is how he carefully
narrowed his investigation in a way that conveniently helps Hillary
Clinton.
Did Hillary Clinton lie to Congress about her email practices? Not part
of the investigation. Did she conceal and illegally remove federal
records? Not part of the investigation. And no word on the pay-for-play
schemes with the Clinton Foundation and its donors. How did the
classified material get on Clinton’s system? Comey confessed his FBI
didn’t even investigate this basic question.
One
analysis of Comey’s legal sophistry is that he saw that the fix was in
and he wasn’t going to cause a crisis and put his job on the line by
recommending a prosecution to a compromised and conflicted Obama Justice
Department.
Comey may think he’s successfully threaded the political needle –
highlighting Clinton’s malfeasance while giving her a
get-out-of-jail-free card. But all he’s done is further lowered the
reputation of the FBI in the eyes of the American people.
Comey’s
statement and testimony to Congress the other day was remarkable for
its intellectual and factual dishonesty (see our next story). But do
not despair! Your Judicial Watch helped break open the Clinton email
scandal and, as you see with our latest effort to depose Hillary
Clinton, will keep on with this groundbreaking litigation and
investigation.
Comey’s FBI Helped Convict Navy Reservist who “Handled Classified Materials Inappropriately”
Among
many things making Comey’s decision infuriating was the fact that his
FBI helped convict a Navy reservist who “handled classified materials
inappropriately.” Our Corruption Chronicles blog had that story:
Illustrating that FBI Director James Comey is a liar and a fraud, his
agency helped convict a Navy reservist last summer of the same crime
that he just cleared Hillary Clinton of committing. In that case the
reservist from northern California got criminally charged—as per FBI
recommendation—for having classified material on personal electronic
devices that weren’t authorized by the government to contain such
information. The FBI investigation didn’t reveal evidence that the
reservist intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized
personnel, so he was just being “extremely careless” like Clinton and
her top aides.
Similar offenses, vastly different outcome. The key factor, of course,
is that one subject is a regular Joe without Clinton-like political
connections. His name is Bryan H. Nishimura and last July he pleaded
guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials
after the FBI found such materials were copied and stored in at least
one “unauthorized and unclassified system.” Clinton had droves of
classified and top secret materials in an “unauthorized and unclassified
system.”
Nishimura had been deployed to Afghanistan as a regional engineer for
the U.S. military and had access to classified briefings and digital
records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government
computers, according to the FBI announcement,
which defines the reservist’s crime in the following manner; “handled
classified materials inappropriately.” So did Clinton on a much larger
scale.
Last
July Nishimura pleaded guilty to “unauthorized removal and retention of
classified materials” and was sentenced to two years of probation, a
$7,500 fine and forfeiture of personal media containing classified
materials. He was further ordered to permanently surrender all
government security clearances. Hillary Clinton could soon have the
highest security clearance available if she gets elected president,
making Comey’s inconceivable recommendation that “no charges are
appropriate in this case” all the more outrageous.
Incredibly, during his 15-minute press conference
this week Comey provided details of how Clinton violated the law by
exchanging dozens of email chains containing classified and top secret
information and how she mishandled national defense information on her
outlaw email server. The FBI director even outlined how Clinton
compromised the country’s national defense to “hostile actors,” yet he
asserts Clinton and her cohorts didn’t intend to break the law.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her
colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified
information,” Comey said, “there is evidence that they were extremely
careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified
information.” Enough to be criminally charged like the Navy reservist
from northern California.
When Comey, the federal prosecutor in the Martha Stewart case, put the
television celebrity in jail for participating in an insider trading
scheme, he acknowledged the importance of not granting special treatment
to a rich and famous person. Stewart went to prison for obstructing
justice and lying to investigators about a sudden stock sale that helped
her avoid losing thousands of dollars. In an interview with his college newspaper
a few years after Stewart’s conviction Comey, then U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York, said that if Stewart were Jane Doe she
would have been prosecuted. “I thought of my hesitation about the case
due to someone being rich and famous, and how it shouldn’t be that way,”
Comey said. “I decided we had to do it.”
Until next week...
 Tom Fitton
President
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