Judicial Watch's Weekly Update: Big Court Victory on Clinton emails
Judicial Watch Victory: Court Orders Discovery into Clinton Email Scandal
I have said all along that, in their delaying, blocking, and obfuscating our attempts to get to the truth about Hillary Clinton’s email, the Justice and State Departments have been acting in bad faith by defending the evasion of the Freedom of Information Act and other email misconduct by Hillary Clinton.
Now, a federal judge is questioning their motives, as well, and ordering them to join us in rectifying this miscarriage of justice.
In a ruling excoriating both the U.S. Departments of State and Justice, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has ordered both agencies to join us in submitting a proposed schedule for discovery into whether Hillary Clinton sought to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a private email system and whether the State Department acted in “bad faith” by failing to disclose knowledge of the email system.
The decision comes in our FOIA lawsuit related to the Benghazi terrorist attack.
Specially, Judge Lamberth ruled:
… the Court ORDERS the parties to meet and confer to plan discovery into (a) whether Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email while Secretary of State was an intentional attempt to evade FOIA; (b) whether the State Department’s attempts to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and (c) whether State has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s requests.
Terming Clinton’s use of her private email system, “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency,” Judge Lamberth wrote in his MEMORANDUM OPINION:
… his [President Barack Obama’s] State and Justice Departments fell far short. So far short that the court questions, even now, whether they are acting in good faith. Did Hillary Clinton use her private email as Secretary of State to thwart this lofty goal [Obama announced standard for transparency]? Was the State Department’s attempt to settle this FOIA case in 2014 an effort to avoid searching – and disclosing the existence of – Clinton’s missing emails? And has State ever adequately searched for records in this case?
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At best, State’s attempt to pass-off its deficient search as legally adequate during settlement negotiations was negligence born out of incompetence. At worst, career employees in the State and Justice Departments colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this Court.
Turning his attention to the Department of Justice, the Court wrote:
The current Justice Department made things worse. When the government last appeared before the Court, counsel claimed, ‘it is not true to say we misled either Judicial Watch or the Court.’ When accused of ‘doublespeak,’ counsel denied vehemently, feigned offense, and averred complete candor. When asked why State masked the inadequacy of its initial search, counsel claimed that the officials who initially responded to Judicial Watch’s request didn’t realize Clinton’s emails were missing, and that it took them two months to ‘figure [] out what was going on’… Counsel’s responses strain credulity. [citations omitted]
The Court granted discovery because the government’s response to the Judicial Watch Benghazi FOIA request for Clinton emails “smacks of outrageous conduct.”
Citing an email (uncovered as a result of our lawsuit) in which Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Benghazi was a terrorist attack immediately after it happened, Judge Lamberth asked:
Did State know Clinton deemed the Benghazi attack terrorism hours after it happened, contradicting the Obama Administration’s subsequent claim of a protest-gone-awry?
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Did the Department merely fear what might be found? Or was State’s bungling just the unfortunate result of bureaucratic red tape and a failure to communicate? To preserve the Department’s integrity, and to reassure the American people their government remains committed to transparency and the rule of law, this suspicion cannot be allowed to fester.
The historic court ruling raises concerns about the Hillary Clinton email scandal and government corruption that millions of Americans share.
We look forward to conducting careful discovery into the Clinton email issue, and we hope the Justice Department and State Department recognize Judge Lamberth’s criticism and help, rather than obstruct, this court-ordered discovery.
Why Did Top FBI Lawyer Meet With Clinton’s Lawyers Before the Election?
Evidence of the anti-Trump conspiracy run by Hillary Clinton gang and the Obama administration is now sitting out there in the open for all to see. We’re pursuing the latest piece of this racket – the chumminess between the Obama FBI and Clinton’s law firm before the election.
We just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking records of all meetings in 2016 between former FBI General Counsel James Baker and the Perkins Coie law firm. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) reportedly paid Fusion GPS to create the “salacious and unverified” Clinton-DNC anti-Trump dossier.
The lawsuit cites a specific media report that FBI top lawyer Baker met with Perkins Coie lawyers to discuss allegations of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. The meeting reportedly took place weeks before the 2016 election and before the FBI secured a controversial FISA spy warrant targeting then-candidate Trump’s campaign.
We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the DOJ failed to respond to an October 9, 2018, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02617)) seeking:
All records concerning any and all meetings between former FBI general counsel James Baker and one or more attorneys from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm during 2016.
On October 4, 2018, Fox News reported that Baker told congressional investigators that Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann “initiated contact with him and provided documents and computer storage devices on Russian hacking.” The contact was made in late 2016 as federal investigators prepared a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
At the time, Perkins Coie had hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig into President Trump’s background. Fusion GPS paid British ex-spy Christopher Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier, memos from which were shared with the FBI in the summer of 2016.
The DNC and Clinton campaign’s funding of the unverified dossier was revealed in a memo from House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, which was disclosed publicly on February 2, 2018.
According to an October 24, 2017, report, Perkins Coie lawyer Marc E. Elias retained Fusion GPS in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC: “The Clinton campaign and DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.” Fusion GPS gave Steele’s dossier and other research documents to Elias.
The real collusion scandal is the hand-in-hand effort by the Clinton campaign and the Obama DOJ/FBI to spy upon and destroy Donald J. Trump. The FBI, pulled by the troika of Comey/McCabe/Strzok, became an arm of the Clinton campaign.
And our new lawsuit aims to get to the bottom of the massive scandal.
Major New Judicial Watch Investigative Report on George Soros
Left-wing billionaire George Soros has a massive foundation operation that is leveraged for outsized influence here at home and abroad – incredibly, with the help of your tax dollars. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has the details.
The U.S. government subsidizes billionaire George Soros’ radical leftist agenda dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars to his deeply politicized Open Society Foundations (OSF) worldwide, records uncovered by Judicial Watch show. In a special investigative report, Judicial Watch documents the financial link between U.S.-funded entities and OSF affiliates to further the Hungarian-born philanthropist’s agenda seeking to destabilize legitimate governments, erase national borders, target conservative politicians, finance civil unrest, subvert institutions of higher education, and orchestrate refugee crises for political gain. The special report also illustrates the financial and staffing nexus between OSF and the U.S. government. In 2018, OSF projected expending more than $530 million to promote Soros’ radical globalist agenda in every corner of the world under the guise of supporting democratically elected governments, strengthening the rule of law and promoting fairness in political, legal and economic systems. The reality is far different, the report shows. Soros, with the help of American taxpayer dollars, bolsters a radical leftwing agenda that in the United States has included: promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts; fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist racialist organizations; financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other organizations involved in the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; weakening the integrity of our electoral systems; promoting taxpayer funded abortion-on-demand; advocating a government-run health care system; opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts; promoting dubious transnational climate change agreements that threaten American sovereignty; and working to advance gun control and erode Second Amendment protections. The Soros network is engaged in an active effort to affect politics, economics, and societies globally, including in Europe (Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary) and Latin America (Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico). Judicial Watch has successfully investigated and litigated to document the paper trail left by the OSF network as it operates, at taxpayer expense, to subvert and manipulate the sovereignty of constitutional republics and allies of the United States. Last year, Judicial Watch exposed a collaborative effort between the U.S. government and Soros to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia. Records obtained by Judicial Watch in that investigation show that the U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia worked behind the scenes with OSF to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The cash—about $5 million—flowed through the State Department and USAID. The new report identifies OSF affiliates worldwide that receive U.S. government funding as well as the alarming figures. The Soros operations are highly sophisticated and work across academia, the legal system, labor, agriculture and “social justice” organizations as well as religious and political groups. Key personnel in the multi-faceted OSF network are former American government officials known to leverage their status and access to benefit the OSF’s goals. The report identifies a number of them, including Barack Obama’s Domestic Policy Council Director, Cecilia Muñoz, who currently serves on OSF’s U.S. Programs board and OSF President Patrick Gaspard, Director of Political Affairs in the Obama White House and the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. Others include OSF Director of Global Security Denis Reynolds, a former Supervisory Special Agent with the Diplomatic Security Service at the State Department, and OSF Senior Policy Advisor Emily Renard, a former State Department Foreign Service Officer and Africa Policy Officer. OSF-funded groups reportedly promoting, organizing and supporting the illegal immigrant caravan that started in Honduras are also identified in the report. Many of the leftist groups also get hefty sums from Uncle Sam. They include the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), the American Constitution Society, Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (Center for Legal Action in Human Rights, CALDH) and a multitude of others, including those named in a special report published by Judicial Watch earlier this year focusing on OSF in Guatemala. The big question is, why are American taxpayers funding Soros and his highly politicized OSF. Judicial Watch will continue investigating and litigating to get answers.
Until next week…
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton
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