Judicial Watch Submits Email Questions to Hillary Clinton
Our efforts to get at the truth of former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton’s email practices is entering a new and critical phase.
Earlier this week we submitted questions
to her concerning her email practices. Clinton’s answers, under oath, are due on September 29. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted Judicial Watch further discovery on the Clinton email matter and ordered Clinton
to answer the questions “by no later than thirty days thereafter….”
Under federal court rules, Judicial Watch is limited to twenty-five
questions.
It will make this a lengthy update but I think it important to share each of the questions with you:
- Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com
system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was
decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and
when it became operational.
- Describe the creation of your clintonemail.com
email account, including who decided to create it, when it was created,
why it was created, and, if you did not set up the account yourself,
who set it up for you.
-
When did you decide to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and whom did you consult in making this decision?
- Identify all communications in which you participated concerning or relating to your decision to use a clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business and, for
each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in
person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means),
persons present or participating, and content of the communication.
-
In a 60 Minutes interview aired on July 24, 2016, you stated that it was
“recommended” you use a personal email account to conduct official
State Department business. What recommendations were you given about
using or not using a personal email account to conduct official State
Department business, who made any such recommendations, and when were
any such recommendations made?
-
Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned, was it ever suggested, or
did you ever participate in any communication, conversation, or meeting
in which it was discussed that your use of a clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business conflicted
with or violated federal recordkeeping laws. For each instance in which
you were so advised, cautioned or warned, in which such a suggestion was
made, or in which such a discussion took place, identify the time,
date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by
electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and
content of the advice, caution, warning, suggestion, or discussion.
-
Your campaign website states, “When Clinton got to the Department, she
opted to use her personal email account as a matter of convenience.”
What factors other than convenience did you consider in deciding to use a
personal email account to conduct official State Department business?
Include in your answer whether you considered federal records management
and preservation requirements and how email you used to conduct
official State Department business would be searched in response to FOIA
requests.
- After
President Obama nominated you to be Secretary of State and during your
tenure as secretary, did you expect the State Department to receive FOIA
requests for or concerning your email?
-
During your tenure as Secretary of State, did you understand that email
you sent or received in the course of conducting official State
Department business was subject to FOIA?
- During your tenure as Secretary of State, how did you manage and preserve emails in your clintonemail.com
email account sent or received in the course of conducting official
State Department business, and what, if anything, did you do to make
those emails available to the Department for conducting searches in
response to FOIA requests?
-
During your tenure as Secretary of State, what, if any, effort did you
make to inform the State Department’s records management personnel
(e.g., Clarence Finney or the Executive Secretariat’s Office of
Correspondence and Records) about your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business?
- During your tenure as Secretary of State, did State Department personnel ever request access to your clintonemail.com
email account to search for email responsive to a FOIA request? If so,
identify the date access to your account was requested, the person or
persons requesting access, and whether access was granted or denied.
-
At the time you decided to use your clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business, or at any
time thereafter during your tenure as Secretary of State, did you
consider how emails you sent to or received from persons who did not
have State Department email accounts (i.e., “state.gov”
accounts) would be maintained and preserved by the Department or
searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests? If so, what was
your understanding about how such emails would be maintained,
preserved, or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests?
-
On March 6, 2009, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security
Eric J. Boswell wrote in an Information Memo to your Chief of Staff,
Cheryl Mills, that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any
unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely
and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting
calendars.” A March 11, 2009 email states that, in a management meeting
with the assistant secretaries, you approached Assistant Secretary
Boswell and mentioned that you had read the “IM” and that you “get it.”
Did you review the March 6, 2009 Information Memo, and, if so, why did
you continue using an unclassified BlackBerry to access your clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business? Copies of
the March 6, 2009 Information Memo and March 11, 2009 email are attached
as Exhibit A for your review.
-
In a November 13, 2010 email exchange with Huma Abedin about problems with your clintonemail.com
email account, you wrote to Ms. Abedin, in response to her suggestion
that you use a State Department email account or release your email
address to the Department, “Let’s get a separate address or device.” Why
did you continue using your clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business after
agreeing on November 13, 2010 to “get a separate address or device?”
Include in your answer whether by “address” you meant an official State
Department email account (i.e., a “state.gov”
account) and by “device” you meant a State Department-issued
BlackBerry. A copy of the November 13, 2010 email exchange with Ms.
Abedin is attached as Exhibit B for your review.
-
Email exchanges among your top aides and assistants in August 30, 2011
discuss providing you with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or State
Department email address. In the course of these discussions, State
Department Executive Secretary Stephen Mull wrote, “[W]e are working to
provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued BlackBerry to
replace her personal unit which is malfunctioning (possibly because of
her personal email server is down). We will prepare two versions for her
to use – one with an operating State Department email account (which
would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA
requests).” Similarly, John Bentel, the Director of Information and
Records Management in the Executive Secretariat, wrote, “You should be
aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure
and [be] subject to FOIA searches.” Did you request a State Department
issued Blackberry or a State Department email account in or around
August 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your personal device
and clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business instead of
replacing your device and account with a State Department-issued
BlackBerry or a State Department email account? Include in your answer
whether the fact that a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State
Department email address would be subject to FOIA affected your
decision. Copies of the email exchanges are attached as Exhibit C for
your review.
-
In February 2011, Assistant Secretary Boswell sent you an Information
Memo noting “a dramatic increase since January 2011 in attempts . . . to
compromise the private home email accounts of senior Department
officials.” Assistant Secretary Boswell “urge[d] Department users to
minimize the use of personal web-email for business.” Did you review
Assistant Secretary Boswell’s Information Memo in or after February
2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer any steps you took to minimize use of your clintonemail.com
email account after reviewing the memo. A copy of Assistant Secretary
Boswell’s February 2011 Information Memo is attached as Exhibit D for
your review.
-
On June 28, 2011, you sent a message to all State Department personnel
about securing personal email accounts. In the message, you noted
“recent targeting of personal email accounts by online adversaries” and
directed all personnel to “[a]void conducting official Department
business from your personal email accounts.” Why did you continue using
your clintonemail.com
email account to conduct official State Department business after June
28, 2011, when you were advising all State Department Personnel to avoid
doing so? A copy of the June 28, 2011 message is attached as Exhibit E
for your review.
-
Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned about hacking or attempted hacking of your clintonemail.com email account or the server that hosted your clintonemail.com account and, if so, what did you do in response to the advice, caution, or warning?
- When you were preparing to leave office, did you consider allowing the State Department access to your clintonemail.com
email account to manage and preserve the official emails in your
account and to search those emails in response to FOIA requests? If you
considered allowing access to your email account, why did you decide
against it? If you did not consider allowing access to your email
account, why not?
-
After you left office, did you believe you could alter, destroy,
disclose, or use email you sent or received concerning official State
Department business as you saw fit? If not, why not?
-
In late 2014, the State Department asked that you make available to the
Department copies of any federal records of which you were aware, “such
as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving
as Secretary of State.” After you left office but before your attorneys
reviewed the email in your clintonemail.com
email account in response to the State Department’s request, did you
alter, destroy, disclose, or use any of the email in the account or
authorize or instruct that any email in the account be altered,
destroyed, disclosed, or used? If so, describe any email that was
altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used, when the alteration,
destruction, disclosure, or use took place, and the circumstances under
which the email was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? A copy of a
November 12, 2014 letter from Under Secretary of State for Management
Patrick F. Kennedy regarding the State
Department’s request is attached as Exhibit F for your review.
- After your lawyers completed their review of the emails in your clintonemail.com
email account in late 2014, were the electronic versions of your emails
preserved, deleted, or destroyed? If they were deleted or destroyed,
what tool or software was used to delete or destroy them, who deleted or
destroyed them, and was the deletion or destruction done at your
direction?
-
During your October 22, 2015 appearance before the U.S. House of
Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, you testified that 90 to
95 percent of your emails “were in the State’s system” and “if they
wanted to see them, they would certainly have been able to do so.”
Identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you
relied in support of the statement, how and when you became aware of
these facts, and, if you were made aware of these facts by or through
another person, identify the person who made you aware of these facts.
-
Identify all communications between you and Brian Pagliano concerning or
relating to the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of
any emails in your clintonemail.com
email account, including any instruction or direction to Mr. Pagliano
about the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of emails
in your account when transferring the clintonemail.com
email system to any alternate or replacement server. For each
communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person,
in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons
present or participating, and content of the communication.
These are simple questions about her email system that we hope will
finally result in straightforward answers, under oath, from Hillary
Clinton.
In Judge Sullivan’s opinion ordering Clinton to answer written questions under oath, he wrote:
The Court is persuaded that Secretary Clinton’s testimony is necessary
to enable her to explain on the record the purpose for the creation and
operation of the clintonemail.com system for State Department business.
In our July 2016 request to depose Hillary Clinton, we argued:
Secretary Clinton’s deposition is necessary to complete the record.
Although certain information has become available through investigations
by the Benghazi Select Committee, the FBI, and the State Department
Inspector General, as well as through Plaintiff’s narrowly tailored
discovery to date, significant gaps in the evidence remain. Only
Secretary Clinton can fill these gaps, and she does not argue otherwise.
***
To [Judicial Watch’s] knowledge, Secretary Clinton has never testified under oath why she created and used the clintonemail.com system to conduct official government business. Her only public statements on the issue are unsworn.
Judge Sullivan also ordered that
we may depose the former Director of Information Resource Management of
the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-IRM”) John Bentel by October 31.
Even as we are the verge of obtaining more information directly from
Hillary Clinton, almost daily, new revelations about Clinton’s email
practices remind us that, despite efforts by the Congress and the FBI,
we have not gotten to the bottom of it.
For
example, the State Department admitted this week that 30 of 14,900
deleted emails recovered by the FBI from Hillary Clinton’s private email
server may involve the 2012 attack on Benghazi, Libya. The Hill reports:
An
undetermined number of those 30 emails were not included in the cache
of 30,000 the former secretary of State voluntarily turned over to the
State Department in 2014, government lawyers told U.S. District Court
Judge Amit P. Mehta, according to multiple reports.
The
agency has committed to releasing the newly uncovered documents under a
series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the
conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, but first it must weigh
whether the emails are personal or work-related.
It
was astonishing to me that it took a federal court hearing to force the
State Department to disclose the details of the Benghazi material on
Clinton’s “deleted” and “personal” emails. The federal court was
skeptical of the Obama administration lawyers argument that the federal
government needed 30 days to review and release 30 emails. In fact, the
Court encouraged to move sooner and demanded a report on the progress
of the review by Tuesday, September 6.
As I wrote this, there is breaking news of
FBI records of the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails
being released. (The dishonest FBI is following the cynical DC game of
releasing bad news on a Friday before a holiday, obviously to help Hillary Clinton). I’ll be appearing on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor” tonight to discuss these late breaking developments and will be on Fox & Friends
tomorrow morning and the Wall Street Journal Editorial Report,
also on Fox.
Mexican Drugs Enter U.S. at Record Rates
Our unsecured border with Mexico isn’t a matter simply of illegal immigration. It’s also a matter of public safety. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the disturbing story of the drugs pouring across our southern border.
The Obama administration’s failure to protect the southern border has
allowed Mexican cartels to smuggle record amounts of drugs into the
United States, especially heroin, which is increasingly popular in the
U.S. Once the drugs get smuggled north Mexican traffickers use street,
prison and outlaw motorcycle gangs to distribute them throughout the
country much like a legitimate business enterprise.
This has been going on for years and there seems to be no end in sight, according to a disturbing new report
published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the nonpartisan
agency that provides Congress with policy and legal analysis. “Mexican
transnational criminal organizations are the major suppliers and key
producers of most illegal drugs smuggled into the United States,” the
CRS states in its new report. “They have been increasing their share of
the U.S. drug market—particularly with respect to heroin.”
The
bulk of the heroin smuggled into the United States transits across the
Southwest border, the CRS writes, revealing that “from 2010 to 2015
heroin seizures in this area more than doubled from 1,016 kg to 2,524
kg.”
The trend mirrors the increase in overall seizures throughout the U.S.,
the CRS figures show. For instance, federal arrests and prosecutions of
heroin traffickers have skyrocketed with 6,353 heroin-related arrests in
2015. Additionally, the number of individuals sentenced for heroin
trafficking offenses in federal courts has increased by almost 50%, the
report says.
There are at least eight major Mexican drug trafficking organizations
operating in the United States with the Sinaloa Cartel being the most
active, the CRS reveals. “Mexican transnational criminal organizations
(MTCOs) remain the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States;
no other group can challenge them in the near term.” They operate
sophisticated enterprises, using nearly 100 U.S. gangs in their
cross-border crimes, government figures show.
Because the Mexican cartels move their drugs through the Southwest
border, western states have become part of what’s known as the “heroin
transit zone,” the CRS report says. “In addition, as the Mexican
traffickers take on a larger role in the U.S. heroin market, and expand
their operations to the East Coast, authorities have seen black tar
heroin emerge in the Northeastern United States, where it had rarely
been seen,” the report states. Large quantities of a synthetic opioid
known as Fentanyl are also entering the U.S. primarily via the Mexican
border, though the drug also comes from China. Fentanyl is 25-40 times
more potent than heroin and 50-100 times more potent than morphine.
Undoubtedly, there’s an epidemic of drug abuse in the U.S. but cutting
off the source would obviously improve the crisis. This may seem like
common sense, but the CRS gently reminds legislators to consider it.
“Policymakers may examine U.S. efforts to combat heroin trafficking as a
means of combatting opioid abuse in the United States,” the CRS writes
in its report. “Policymakers may also look at existing federal
strategies on drug control, transnational crime, and Southwest border
crime to evaluate whether they are able to target the current heroin
trafficking threat.” Among the common-sense suggestions listed in the
document is “securing U.S. borders.” It comes from the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which has made disrupting drug
trafficking and production a priority.
The impact of Mexican drug cartels has been well documented for some
time in a number of government audits, even as the Obama administration
insists the southern border is secure. Less than a year ago the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a report confirming
that the majority of illegal drugs in the United States come from
Mexico and Mexican traffickers remain the greatest criminal threat to
the United States. They’re classified as Transitional Criminal
Organizations (TCOs) by the government and for years they’ve smuggled in
enormous quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.
The
rule of law is weakened when our government ignores – and even violates
— the laws on immigration. And our communities are poisoned by the
resulting flood of drugs and violence.
Judicial Watch Uncovers CIA ‘Watergate History’ Report
This is a fascinating story and a bit of a change of pace from our typical FOIA finds.
Thanks to yet another JW lawsuit, Americans now know more about the
behind the scenes maneuvering in the Watergate scandal – including a
top-secret telephone call between President Nixon and his acting
director of the FBI that quite conceivably could have prevented the
continuing cover-up that cost Nixon his presidency.
This week we released a document obtained from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through litigation (Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency
(No. 1:16-cv-00146)) titled: “Working Draft – CIA Watergate History,
” which was prepared by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General.
The document was, “compiled during the latter part of 1973 and 1974.”
The
introduction to the agency history states: “Undertaken as an internal
CIA review of the matter, it is incomplete and remains a working paper.”
The CIA evidently never finalized the report.
The report reveals that Lieutenant General Vernon A. Walters, the Deputy
Director of the CIA, met with Acting Director L. Patrick Gray of the
FBI on July 12, 1972, to discuss assistance the CIA had provided to
retired CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, of the White House Special
Investigations Unit (“The Plumbers”). CIA assistance to The Plumbers was
terminated in August 1971. The report states the CIA assistance had
been at the request of the White House for the purported purpose of
tracking down security leaks in the government.
During the July 12, 1972, meeting, Gray told Walters that he had
received a call from President Nixon. During the call, “He [Gray] told
the President that he had talked to Walters and that both Walters and
Gray felt the President should get rid of the people involved in the
cover-up, no matter how high. Gray said he had also told this to Dean.”
Also of note is the identification of Eugenio “Musculito” Martinez
as the only one of the Watergate burglars still actively being paid by
the CIA at the time of the arrests on June 17, 1972. At one point, the
report quoted a CIA attorney referring to Martinez,
in discussions with lawyers from the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) on October 12, 1973, as “an agent.”
“Under
no circumstances would the Agency give up all records relating to the
Agency’s relationship with Martinez,” the CIA lawyer told WSPF, for to
do so would represent “the breaking of trust of an agent.”
This means the CIA, at the time of the Watergate break-in, had “an
agent” planted on the break-in team. (The FBI determined that when
arrested, Martinez possessed a key to the desk of Maxie Wells, the
secretary to Democratic Party official R. Spencer Oliver whose telephone
was wiretapped in the Watergate break-in operation.) While Martinez’s
dual role has been discussed in other Watergate histories, the
declaration by CIA lawyers of Martinez’s status as “an agent” appears to
add new information to the Watergate saga.
Totaling
155 pages, the declassified Secret CIA report discusses the national
security environment in 1971, specifically the impact of the New York Times
publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” unlawfully released by RAND
Corporation military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The establishment of the
Plumbers and the CIA support requests for assistance from E. Howard Hunt
are also chronicled. Another section of the report details CIA
involvement in preparing a psychological profile of Daniel Ellsberg.
With
respect to the Watergate incident specifically, the report describes
the interaction of senior CIA officials with the Department of Justice,
the FBI and White House staff. Official memoranda of record and
telephone call transcripts by key government officials such as Director
of Central Intelligence Richard Helms and Acting FBI Director L. Patrick
Gray are quoted and excerpted at length.
The
report features a three-page summary of a November 19, 1973, WSPF
interview of James Jesus Angleton, the Associate Deputy Director of
Operations for Counterintelligence at the CIA from 1954 to 1975. Mr.
Angleton discussed leaks of classified information to the media;
reporter Seymour Hersh; the likelihood of copies of the Pentagon Papers
being delivered to the Soviet Embassy; “Soviet methods of recruiting
foreigners as agents and their use of leaks, i.e.,
Jack Anderson;” and, the Soviet Disinformation Program.
This
is an extraordinary historical document. Given that it discloses direct
CIA involvement in Watergate, we aren’t surprised that it took 42 years
and a Judicial Watch lawsuit to force its release.
For more information, check out this piece by Fox News’ James Rosen, who is an expert on the Watergate scandal.
A New Best-Seller: JW’s Book Makes Big Splash on Charts: Clean House – Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies
I’m pleased to report that my new JW book, Clean House – Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies,
debuted nationwide this week– and it has already having reached the top
50 in “Barnes and Noble Top 100” and on Amazon. You may recall that my
previous book, The Corruption Chronicles,
was a New York Times best seller.
According to the Barnes & Noble website “Overview:”
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Corruption Chronicles comes
a devastating expose of the scandals of Obama’s second term. Judicial
Watch President Tom Fitton reveals what the largest watchdog agency in
America has uncovered in its battles against Obama secrecy.
Clean House takes
us through incriminating documents from the attack in Benghazi, Hillary
Clinton’s secret emails, the IRS scandal, and the Obamacare swindle.
With
the headlines swirling around our release of Hillary Clinton emails
exposing the Clinton State Department-Clinton Foundation scandal, this
book could not be hitting the shelves at a better time. The chapter on
‘Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Cover-Up’ provides the full background.
Your purchase of Clean House will help JW directly and serve as your “field guide” to DC government corruption.
You can find the book here
.
Until next week...
 Tom Fitton President
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