Year End Bang on Clinton Email
In
2016, Judicial Watch established itself it as the most significant
public policy entity in the nation. Our work in the courts exposing the
truth about the Clinton emails and the corruption of the Clinton
pay-to-play scandals changed history.
So it is fitting that in this, the year’s final Weekly Update,
I have a report for you on a new major court decision that could
dramatically influence what comes next on the Clinton email scandal.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit made a ruling this
week in a JW case that would require Secretary of State John Kerry to
seek the help of the attorney general in recovering additional Hillary
Clinton emails. This means that Clinton email issue will be squarely
before the Trump administration, as I highlight in our statement to the
press:
Today’s appeals court ruling rejects the Obama State Department’s
excuses justifying its failure to ask the attorney general, as the law
requires, to pursue the recovery of the Clinton emails. This ruling
means that the Trump Justice Department will have to decide if it wants
to finally enforce the rule of law and try to retrieve all the emails Clinton and her aides unlawfully took with them when they left the State Department.
The appellate ruling reverses a decision in which the District Court declared “moot” a Judicial Watch’s lawsuit
challenging the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry to comply with
the Federal Records Act (FRA) in seeking to recover the emails of
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other high level State
Department officials who used non-“state.gov” email accounts to conduct official business (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. John F. Kerry (No. 16-5015)).
According to the FRA, if an agency head becomes aware of “any actual,
impending, or threatened unlawful removal . . . or destruction of
[agency] records,” he or she “shall notify the Archivist . . . and with
the assistance of the Archivist shall initiate action through the
Attorney General for the recovery of [those] records.” Kerry refused to
do this, and we sued. The lower court decided Kerry had done enough.
The appeals court panel disagreed:
Appellants sought the only relief provided by the Federal Records Act—an
enforcement action through the Attorney General. But nothing the
Department did (either before or after those complaints were filed) gave
appellants what they wanted. Instead of proceeding through the
Attorney General, the Department asked the former Secretary to return
her emails voluntarily and similarly requested that the FBI share any
records it obtained. Even though those efforts bore some fruit, the
Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder—e.g., by
following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney
General—might not bear more still. It is therefore abundantly clear
that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants
have not “been given everything [they] asked for.” Absent a showing
that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more
emails, the case is not
moot.
In May 2015, we filed the lawsuit after the State Department failed to take action following a letter to
Kerry “notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and
requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the FRA,”
including working through the attorney general to recover the emails.
Judicial Watch’s lawsuit subsequently was consolidated with a later lawsuit filed by our friends at the Cause of Action Institute. For more on this court development, you can see our discussion over at the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal.
And then we also have our Facebook Live Weekly Updatediscussions here and on Youtube.
This
Obama administration has demonstrated itself to be an agent of
lawlessness and an enemy of an open and transparent republic. To start,
let’s hope that President-elect Trump’s appointees at the State
Department and Justice Department finally start enforcing the rule of
law on the Clinton email scandal.
Obama’s Travel Cost $96 Million Over Eight Years
For
a couple that has spent eight years apologizing for their country, the
Obamas have nevertheless managed to enjoy its taxpayer-provided bounty.
This week, thanks to the work of our intrepid investigators and
hard-charging lawyers, we released to the public several reports from
the Secret Service and the Air Force that bring the known total of Obama
travel expense over the past eight years to a staggering
$96,938,882.51.
The
new reports contain details of the costs of Obama’s Earth Day trip to
the Florida Everglades, a political fundraising trip to San Diego,
Michelle’s annual Aspen ski trip, her trip to Morocco, the family
vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, as well as Hillary’s ride with Obama on
Air Force One to North Carolina.
We received this information after filing two separate Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, asking the court to enjoin the Secret
Service from withholding responsive documents from Judicial Watch (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:15-cv-01983)) and (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:16-cv-00863)). The Secret Service is a component of the Department of Homeland Security.
-
Secret Service records reveal that Barack Obama’s April 22, 2015, Earth Day trip to give a global warming speech in the Florida Everglades cost taxpayers $145,752.36, which brings the total cost of the trip to at least $1,012,367.76.
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The Secret Service records for Obama’s October 2015 fundraising travel to San Diego reveal expenses totaling $180,187.09. Including the U.S. Air Force expenses, the total cost of Obama’s San Diego trip was at least $2,181,655.99.
-
Michelle Obama’s February 2016 ski trip to Aspen with
her daughters cost taxpayers a total of $222,875.58. The Secret Service
expenses were $165,806.78. Judicial Watch previously obtained records
from the Air Force revealing
that Michelle Obama’s weekend trip to Aspen, Colorado, last year cost
American taxpayers $57,068.80 in travel expenses alone for the 7.4-hour
round-trip flight.
-
Judicial Watch obtained records from the U.S. Air Force and the Secret Service revealing that Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba and Argentina in March 2016 cost taxpayers $7,146,015.18 in Secret Service and Air Force travel expenses.
- Air Force records regarding Michelle Obama’s trip to Morocco, Spain and Liberia
with her daughters in June 2016 revealed $450,026.40 in flight expenses alone. A C-32A was flown for 28.4 hours.
- Judicial Watch recently obtained Air Force records which reveal that the Obama’s August 2016 vacation to
Martha’s Vineyard cost taxpayers $450,295 in flight expenses alone.
- Judicial Watch also recently obtained records from the Air Force showing that in July 2016 taxpayers paid $360,236 for Hillary Clinton to accompany Obama on Air Force One for a campaign trip to North Carolina.
Also, in October 2016 Michele Obama joined Hillary Clinton in
North Carolina for a rally reportedly to “encourage early voting in
North Carolina.” Documents regarding this trip have been requested but
have not yet been received. The First Lady typically flies in a C-32 A
so the 1.8 hour flight could safely be estimated to have cost taxpayers
$28,522.80.
The Obamas’ notorious abuse of presidential travel perks wasted military
resources and stressed the Secret Service. JW estimates that the final
costs of Obama’s unnecessary vacation and political travel will well
exceed $100 million. You can see how President-elect Trump can
immediately save taxpayers money by reforming presidential travel.
Islamic Terrorists Raise Cash in Latin America to Attack U.S.
This
Christmas week is a slow one for what already is a dangerously
somnolescent government here in Washington. But your Judicial Watch is
always on the alert. Yesterday, our Corruption Chronicles blog detailed the latest discomforting news about the terrorism crisis caused by nation’s open borders:
Latin America is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism where groups like ISIS
and Hezbollah operate freely and raise large sums of money to finance
terrorist activities in other countries, mainly the United States,
according to a new report released by Spain’s Defense Ministry.
“Latin
America represents an important region for Islamic radicalism because
conditions enable the free, almost undetectable, movement of their
members throughout the region,” the defense document states.
Governments in the region consider Islamic terrorism to be a foreign
problem, the report says, and intelligence agencies are ill equipped to
handle the threat they represent. “The ignorance involving the threat of
jihadist terrorism in Latin America has been such that some governments
have refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities and other intelligence
services,” the disturbing assessment reveals. The report was released
this month by the division of Spain’s Defense agency known as Instituto
Español de Estudios Estratégicos (IEEE), Spanish Institute of Strategic
Studies. The document, authored by a counterterrorism expert, is titled
“El radicalismo islámico en América Latina. De Hezbolá al Daesh (Estado
Islámico),” Islamic Radicalism in Latin America, from Hezbollah to ISIS.
The Lebanese group Hezbollah is identified as having the largest
fundraising operations in the region, though others, such as ISIS, are
also prominent. The terrorist organizations have teamed up with
established drug trafficking conglomerates to raise and launder large
quantities of cash. The report identifies a group called El clan Barakat
in Paraguay and Joumaa in Colombia as two examples of drug trafficking
enterprises that have long worked with Islamic jihadists to launder
money. Spain’s military experts refer to the relationships as a
“marriage of convenience” between Latin American organized crime and
Muslim terrorists with different objectives and interests.
“Each takes advantage of the benefits that the relationship provides,” the report states.
ISIS
is expanding quickly in Latin America, the report warns, revealing that
around 100 individuals from the region’s large Muslim community have
traveled to Syria and Iraq to join terrorist groups recently. Argentina
and Brazil have the largest Muslim populations in Latin America with
more than 1 million each, the report says. Venezuela, Mexico, Peru and
Chile also have large and rapidly growing Muslim populations. Trinidad
and Tobago, Caribbean islands on the northern edge of Latin America, are
identified as “especially worrisome” because local authorities reported
that 70 of their citizens traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS.
Additionally, nine of the islands’ citizens were detained in Turkey
attempting to cross the border into Syria.
The report cites a 2012 article in
a military publication from Trinidad that compares the growth of
radical Islam in the country to a group of violent Muslims that tried to
overthrow the government in 1990.
The strong connection between Islamic terrorists and Latin America has
been developing for years and Judicial Watch has reported it
extensively, especially when it comes to Mexico. With a dangerously
porous southern border, the collaboration between Muslim terrorists and
Mexican drug cartels has created a critical threat to the United States.
Last year Judicial Watch reported
that ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, in
an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the
Mexican state of Chihuahua. Judicial Watch also broke a story about
Mexican drug cartels smuggling foreigners from countries with terrorist
links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso. The foreigners are
classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the U.S. government and
they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads
located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road—Highway 20.
Earlier this year Judicial Watch uncovered State Department records
confirming that “Arab extremists” are entering the U.S. through Mexico
with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” Among them is a top Al
Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. The government documents also reveal
that some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing
logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United
States. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the State
Department records, via a September 2004 cable from the American
consulate in Ciudad Juárez, as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. In December,
2014 Shukrijumah was killed by the Pakistan Army in an
intelligence-borne operation in South Waziristan.
But before he died Shukrijumah helped plan several U.S. attacks,
including plots to bomb Oprah Winfrey’s studio and detonate nuclear
devices in multiple American cities. For years Shukrijumah appeared on
the FBI’s most wanted list and, despite being sought by the agency, he
crossed back and forth into the U.S. from Mexico to meet fellow militant
Islamists in Texas. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported that,
as one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, Shukrijumah piloted an
aircraft into the Cielo Dorado airfield in Anthony, New Mexico.
You can see how the typical Washington debate about border security is
ludicrous. Talk of “dreamers” and illegal aliens doing jobs Americans
supposedly won’t is designed to distract us from enforcing the rule of
law at our border and stopping those who want nothing more than to
destroy our civilization.
As
blizzards settle in on our Great Plains, one forecaster sees a deep
freeze in the Lower 48 reaching as far as Florida, in the first week of
the New Year.
I think of a particularly beautiful Christmas carol: “In The Bleak Midwinter.
” Here is the first verse:
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
This
carol is actually about the coming of the Christ Child on a midwinter
night, the ultimate expression of hope in a dark and wintry world.
I
can’t think of a better way to start the New Year than with this type
of hope – not the phony “hope” we hear so much about from politicians.
So,
on behalf of all of my colleagues here at Judicial Watch, I wish you
and your families a most wonderful, prosperous – and truly hopeful – New
Year.
Until next week...
 Tom Fitton President
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