We’ve been in court for years over Hillary Clinton’s emails — as
you know, we are persistent for justice.
The great news is that U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has
granted
our request to depose the former secretary of state about her emails and
Benghazi attack documents. The court
also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff,
Cheryl Mills, and two other State Department officials.
Additionally, the court granted our request to subpoena Google for
relevant documents and records associated with Clinton’s emails during
her tenure at the State Department.
The ruling comes in our lawsuit
seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi
attack” (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)).
Remember, it was Judicial Watch that discovered in 2014 that the
“talking points” that provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false
statements were created
by the Obama White House. This FOIA lawsuit led
directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in
2015.
In December 2018, Judge Lamberth first ordered
discovery into whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email
server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent
to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and
whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive
to our request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the
Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email. The court
ruled
that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to
government transparency.” The State and Justice Departments continued to
defend Clinton’s and the agency’s email conduct.
Judge Lamberth has now overruled Clinton’s and the State and Justice
Department’s objections to limited additional discovery by first
noting:
Discovery up until this point has brought to light a noteworthy amount
of relevant information, but Judicial Watch requests an additional round of
discovery, and understandably so. With each passing round of discovery, the
Court is left with more questions than answers.
Additionally, Judge Lamberth said that he is troubled by the fact that
both the State Department and Department of Justice want to close discovery
in this case:
[T]here is still more to learn. Even though many important questions
remain unanswered, the Justice Department inexplicably still takes the
position that the Court should close discovery and rule on dispositive
motions. The Court is especially troubled by this. To argue that the Court
now has enough information to determine whether State conducted an adequate
search is preposterous, especially when considering State’s deficient
representations regarding the existence of additional Clinton emails.
Instead, the Court will authorize a new round of discovery
With respect to Clinton, the court found that her prior testimony,
mostly through written sworn answers, was not sufficient:
The Court has considered the numerous times in which Secretary Clinton
said she could not recall or remember certain details in her prior
interrogatory answers. In a deposition, it is more likely that
plaintiff’s counsel could use documents and other testimony to attempt to
refresh her recollection. And so, to avoid the unsatisfying and inefficient
outcome of multiple rounds of fruitless interrogatories and move this
almost six-year-old case closer to its conclusion, Judicial Watch will be
permitted to clarify and further explore Secretary Clinton’s answers in
person and immediately after she gives them. The Court agrees with Judicial
Watch – it is time to hear directly from Secretary Clinton.
We uncovered the Clinton email scandal and we’re pleased that the
court authorized us to depose Mrs. Clinton directly on her email conduct
and how it impacted the people’s ‘right to know’ under FOIA. The
deposition must take place by May 16, so stay tuned.
Government’s Record-Keeping Failures Risks Lives, Costs
Billions
The Clinton email fiasco is but one instance of federal records
mismanagement – that costs billions and could risk lives. Here’s a key
whistleblower report
from our Corruption Chronicles blog.
The U.S. government’s failure to properly keep records not only
compromises accountability and transparency, it has cost American taxpayers
billions of dollars and in some cases their lives. A whistleblower and
former federal contractor with firsthand knowledge of the matter told
Judicial Watch that the epidemic of poor records management across all
federal agencies constitutes the biggest government accountability and
transparency scandal of our lifetime. His name is Don Lueders, a computer
software engineer who spent 20 years at several top software companies
developing costly applications to help the government properly manage
records.
However, billions of dollars in records management applications that
could help solve the problem have never been used and the crisis continues.
Government agencies purchase the programs, Lueders says, but never actually
utilizes them. “The government buys software because it gives the
impression that they’re doing records management,” Lueders told
Judicial Watch during a recent interview. “But they don’t use it.” He
refers to the government’s longtime record-keeping system as
“information chaos” that requires a congressional investigation.
Many of the government’s record management failures have been exposed
by Judicial Watch in cases that involve key federal agencies, including the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS), State Department, Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ), among others. In fact,
a recent news
article on Uncle Sam’s widespread records management deficiencies
mentions two cases that Judicial Watch litigated. One involves a scandal in
which the Obama IRS selectively
audited conservative groups that opposed the administration’s
policies. The other involves Hillary Clinton’s now famous illegal
use of a private email server while she was Obama’s Secretary of
State.
For years Judicial Watch’s work has helped uncover the underlying
problems associated with the government’s dreadful record-keeping system,
which is incredibly handy in coverups. Many of the cases required a
dragged-out litigious process to obtain records that should be readily
available under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A recent example
involves the unsecure server Clinton used to transmit classified
information as the president’s chief foreign affairs adviser. Judicial
Watch has been embroiled in a years-long legal battle with the government
for the records and just a few weeks ago, more than a dozen new
Clinton emails not previously produced as per a federal court order
magically appeared. A DOJ attorney could not explain to a federal judge how
the FBI suddenly found the new stash of Clinton emails, which were
originally to be provided by the State Department.
Some record-keeping failures have more serious consequences as the story
mentioned earlier points out. For instance, the man who shot and killed
more than two dozen people at a Texas church a few years ago used guns he
would not have been able to buy if the Air Force had managed its records
efficiently. “On six occasions, military officials failed to send Devin
Kelley’s records to the FBI while the Air Force investigated,
court-martialed, and imprisoned him for abusing his wife and stepson,”
the article states. “Had the FBI received the records, the killer would
have been barred from buying the weapons used in the massacre.” Similar
records management failures have also received widespread media attention.
Remember that in 2015 an astounding 21.5 million records were stolen from
the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government’s chief
human resources agency and personnel policy manager.
This is not a partisan issue, but rather a pervasive government wide
emergency that Lueders says has been going on for almost a quarter century
regardless of who occupies the White House. “We’re wasting billions and
people are dying,” he said, stressing that democracy can’t exist
without accountability and transparency.
Chicago Leaders Defend Freeing Illegal Alien to Sexually Assault
Toddler
Judicial Watch has done much to expose and combat the physical dangers
Americans experience at the hands of aliens in this country illegally and
protected by lawless sanctuary city policies. Our Corruption
Chronicles blog reports:
Police and elected officials in Chicago have the audacity to vigorously
defend their dangerous sanctuary policy after a previously deported illegal
immigrant felon that they released from jail sexually assaulted a
3-year-old girl. The Mexican man, 34-year-old Christopher Puente, has a
lengthy criminal history that includes two felony convictions, yet Chicago
Police freed him into the community after his latest arrest for theft. It
didn’t matter to those in charge of serving and protecting Windy City
residents that the violent illegal alien had served time for forced-entry
burglary and forgery or that he was recently charged with battery against a
woman.
To honor Chicago’s outrageous sanctuary measure, authorities ignored
an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer and instead released
the aggravated felon. A few weeks ago, Puente sexually assaulted a toddler
at a Cook County fast-food restaurant. He lured the girl into a bathroom
stall of the River North eatery and sexually assaulted her, according to a
local newspaper
report that attributes the information to Cook County prosecutors. The
girl’s father was in an adjacent stall helping her brother use the
toilet. When he heard his daughter cry and saw her legs dangling, the
father tried to open the locked stall where Puente held her and eventually
pulled her out under the door. The illegal immigrant remained locked in the
stall, according to prosecutors, but eventually escaped. The next day he
was arrested for trespassing nearby and was singled out as the girl’s
attacker. Puente confessed and provided authorities with disturbing details
of the crime. A judge has ordered him held without bail for predatory
sexual criminal assault.
Outraged federal authorities have reissued an immigration detainer with
Cook County Jail. Had the first detainer been honored by Chicago
authorities Puente would have been deported after his last arrest in
mid-2019. “How many more victims must there be before lawmakers realize
that sanctuary policies do not protect the innocent?” asked
Robert Guadian, field office director of ICE’s Chicago Enforcement
and Removal Operations (ERO). “Puente should have been in ICE custody
last year and removed to his home country. Instead, irresponsible lawmaking
allowed him to walk free and prey on our most vulnerable.” The agency is
perpetually frustrated because detainers are continually rejected by
Chicago-area law enforcement agencies. In Fiscal Year 2019, Cook
County declined more than 1,000 detainers, according to figures
provided by ICE.
Officials have no intention of changing their sanctuary policy. In fact,
they made it a point to publicly defend it after Puente’s latest horrific
crime. In the aftermath of the toddler’s sexual assault, Chicago Mayor
Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Police issued media
statements reiterating that they will not cooperate with the feds.
Lightfoot trashed ICE, saying “they’re critical because we have said
very clearly we are a welcoming city, a sanctuary city. Chicago Police
Department will not cooperate with ICE on any immigration-related business.
And that’s affected their ability to conduct immigration raids across the
city. But that’s exactly our intention. We have to make sure our police
department is seen as a legitimate force in all our communities.” In its
statement, which was published in various local media outlets, the city’s
law enforcement agency wrote this: “The Chicago Police Department remains
committed to protecting all Chicago residents regardless of their
immigration status. Our pledge to restrict ICE access to our information
systems and our refusal to cooperate with ICE immigration enforcement
measures has not changed.”
Chicago has long protected even the most violent of illegal immigrants.
A few years ago, the city even launched a $1.3
million legal defense fund to help illegal aliens facing deportation.
When the public fund was created, a Chicago alderman admitted he probably
has illegal aliens working in his city office. The lawmaker, Carlos
Ramirez-Rosa, said this in a local news
report: “Donald Trump, we are sending you a message, you will not
tear apart our families, we will stay together. We will defend and protect
our communities.” The money to defend illegal immigrants for violating
the nation’s federal statutes comes from Chicago property tax rebate
funds. At the time, an African-American alderman who represents Chicago’s
South Side went along with the measure to help the city’s illegal
immigrants, but made it clear that the struggling communities she
represents should
have priority. “I’d like to see the administration put the same
amount of effort into creating a legal representation fund for all of those
young black boys and black girls that are racially profiled in this city or
are shot by the police unnecessarily or to support programs like CeaseFire
to quell some of the violence in our community,” said Alderman Pat
Dowell. “When the mayor talks about wanting to keep the immigrant
communities safe, secure and supported, those are the same needs that other
communities have…”
Progressive Policy Drives Rising Crime in New York
In one of his rulings, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed
that local jurisdictions can be “laboratories of democracy” by engaging
in social experiments to discover what works best.
We’re seeing this at play in a perverse way in certain parts of the
country, particularly New York City, which has become a petri dish for
every Leftist nostrum. Our chief investigative reporter, Micah Morrison,
has the details in his Investigative
Bulletin.
Judicial Watch has been documenting rising social disorder in New York
City at the hands of Mayor Bill de Blasio and radical activists in Albany
and Washington. Last year, Democrats rammed through the state legislature a
reform package that eliminated cash bail for a wide
range of offenses—from assault, arson and child abuse to
manslaughter, robbery and riot—and removed judicial discretion in holding
suspects. Advocates for the measure correctly note that bail often
discriminates against the poor—if you can’t afford bail, you sit in
jail. But bail also offered a way to hold repeat offenders, including
violent ones, behind bars until trial.
The reform legislation took effect January 1 and crime rates jumped.
Numbers just in for the first two months of 2020 show a 35 percent increase
in robberies and a 64 percent increase in stolen cars compared to the same
period in 2019, the New York Post reports.
Shootings, up 19 percent. Burglaries, up 21 percent.
Subway robberies are up
sharply, with an increase of more than 100 percent in 2020 compared to
2019. NYPD insiders say subway robberies are largely driven by repeat
juvenile offenders targeting other kids. A subway security official tells
Judicial Watch that crime underground is widespread. In the city’s school
system—the biggest in the country—parents speak with anguish about assaults
on their children. And anti-Semitic hate crimes are significantly
up in the city with America’s largest Jewish population.
All this has contributed to a growing sense of unease in New York. The
politics of bail reform pit New York’s rising progressive forces against
a cadre of Democrats who recognize a looming disaster when they see it. At
a contentious
town hall meeting last month in Forest Hills, Queens, de Blasio
rejected complaints about links between rising crime and bail reform as
“right-wing propaganda,” but he supports fixes
to the law being pushed in Albany. Progressive firebrand Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez is on the other side of the Democrat debate, calling on
Albany to “slow
down” on any legislative changes. By “slow down,” of course she
means do nothing. If Ocasio-Cortez and her allies had their way, prisons
would be entirely
abolished. The outcome of the bail reform fight will say a lot about
progressive power in Albany.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost seven to one in New York City,
so don’t hold your breath waiting for conservative reform. But there are
straws in the wind that suggest change might be stirring. One is the
surprisingly vigorous campaign of veteran prosecutor Jim Quinn for Queens
borough president. Quinn beat his five rivals for the post in the latest
fundraising reports and has been making waves with his criticism of
liberal excesses such as the bail reform law and the closing of the Rikers
Island jail complex. On Twitter, Quinn called
out Ocasio-Cortez and her allies for their “dangerous, radical
agenda” and for “ignoring double-digit crime spikes & the victims
impacted.”
Them’s fightin’ words in New York. The election is March 24 in a
field crowded with liberal contenders surfing the progressive wave. But
Quinn’s conservative message may resonate with a different sort of
voter—like the one who told Bill de Blasio at the Forest Hills town hall
meeting, “Mr. Mayor, I do not feel safe.
Until next week,
