It’s Not an Impeachment — It’s a Coup
There has been nothing in American history that compares to the coup attack
against President Trump. It has been nothing but a wild abuse of the
Constitution. Frankly, the word impeachment should be replaced with
the word coup, because the president was illicitly targeted for
removal from office for doing his job in asking questions about Ukraine
corruption and its ties to Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Burisma. To
be clear, the president was also attacked for objecting to the House
Democrats’ abuse of his office.
And Pelosi’s game of withholding the articles of impeachment in order to
deny President Trump’s justice in the Senate is another unconstitutional
violation of his God-given due process rights! Incredibly, Pelosi has
expanded her coup from the presidency to include the United States
Senate.
The U.S. Senate should reject these acts of tyranny by the House of
Representatives. In the meantime, you can be sure that we will investigate
the Biden-Ukraine scandal, as well as the Deep State scandals and the
illegal spying on the President of the United States. Our republic is at
stake.
Judicial Watch Sues Rep. Schiff for Phone Subpoenas Targeting
Trump
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), in potential violation of law, abused his power to
secretly subpoena and then publish the private phone records of innocent
Americans.
In response, we have filed a lawsuit against Schiff and the House
Intelligence Committee for the controversial subpoenas issued for phone
records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer. The
phone records led to the publication
of the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devon Nunes,
journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria
Toensing, and other American citizens.
We sued under the public’s common-law right of public access to examine
government records after we received no response to a December 6, 2019,
records request (Judicial
Watch v Adam Schiff and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence (No. 1:19-cv-03790)):
1. All subpoenas issued by the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on or about September 30, 2019
to any telecommunications provider including, but not limited to AT&T,
Inc., for records of telephone calls of any individuals;
2. All responses received to the above-referenced subpoenas.
Schiff is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, currently
serving as Chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence. We’re suing Schiff in his capacity as Chairman of that
committee. This lawsuit states:
The records are of critical public importance as the subpoenas were
issued without any lawful basis and violated the rights of numerous private
citizens.
Disclosure of the requested records would serve the public interest by
providing information about the unlawful issuance of the subpoenas.
The requested records fall within the scope of the public’s right of
access to governmental records as a matter of federal common
law.
What else is Mr. Schiff hiding? He and his committee ran roughshod over the
rule of law in pursuit of the abusive impeachment of President Trump. This
lawsuit serves as reminder that Congressman Schiff and Congress are not
above the law.
Judicial Watch Back in Court on Clinton Emails and Benghazi
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth is
considering whether to allow us to question Hillary Clinton and
her top aide in person and under oath about her scandalous misuse of
personal email and her despicable behavior during the Benghazi
slaughter.
At a hearing this week, our attorneys also requested permission to depose
Paul
Combetta, who was the IT specialist working on the Clinton server at
Platte River Networks. Judge Lamberth specifically raised concerns
regarding Combetta’s transfer of Clinton’s emails into a Gmail
account, [email protected]
We asked the court for permission to subpoena Google for information from
that account. Hillary Clinton is also fighting the court’s previously
ordered release of an “after action memo” created by Clinton lawyer Heather
Samuelson in December 2014 that memorializes the Clinton team’s
review and processing of Clinton’s emails.
Our lawsuit seeks
records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack”
(Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of State(No. 1:14-cv-01242)). In 2014 we
famously uncovered that the Obama White House created
the “talking points” that provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false
statements. This Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit led
directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.
In December 2018, we announced court-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 continue to
defend Mrs. Clinton’s and the agencies’ email conduct.
The Clinton email scandal and the related Benghazi scandal are not going
away. Here is some background to put this all in perspective.
As recently as October of this year, we forced the release
of new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been
covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email
account in 2014 if the emails had been released when the State Department
first uncovered them. The Clinton email was first
identified by the State Department in September 2014, but was
withheld from us despite its specific reference to Benghazi talking points.
After it was described in an Office of the Inspector General report,
the court ordered its production. It was only after we informed the
State Department we were prepared to file a motion with the court to compel
production of the records that the Department relented and produced the
email in question.
In September 2019, the State Department provided us
a previously hidden email,
which shows top State Department officials used and were aware of Hillary
Clinton’s email account, and that “she guards it pretty closely.”
Despite a court
order requiring production of the email, the DOJ and State
Departments only produced it after we threatened to seek a court order to
compel its production.
In an August 2019, hearing,
Judge Lamberth ordered production of the record in granting us significant
new discovery in the case. Judge
Lamberth said, “There is no FOIA exemption for political expedience,
nor is there one for bureaucratic incompetence.” The judge also stated
that the government has mishandled this case and the discovery of
information including former Secretary Clinton’s emails so poorly that we
may have the ability to prove they acted in “bad faith.”
Our discovery over the last several months found many more details about
the scope of the Clinton email scandal and cover-up:
- Justin Cooper, former aide to President Bill Clinton and Clinton
Foundation employee who registered the domain name of the unsecure clintonemail.com server
that Clinton used while serving as Secretary of State, testified he
worked with Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, to create the
non-government email system.
- In the interrogatory
responses of E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI
Counterintelligence Division, he stated that the agency found Clinton email
records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the
President.
- Jacob “Jake” Sullivan, Clinton’s senior advisor and deputy chief
of staff when she was secretary of state, testified that
both he and Clinton used her unsecure non-government email system to
conduct official State Department business.
- Eric Boswell, former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic
security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, testified that
Clinton was warned twice against using unsecure BlackBerry’s and personal
emails to transmit classified material.
- Lauren Jiloty, former special assistant to then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton admitted in written
responses under oath to loading contacts on Clinton’s unsecure
BlackBerry. Jiloty also said that she conducted official State Department
business from her own personal email account.
- Obama National Security Advisor and U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations, Susan Rice, admitted in written
responses given under oath that she emailed with former Clinton on
Clinton’s non-government email account and that she received emails
related to government business on her own personal email account.
- We received written
responses under oath from Clinton’s assistant Monica Hanley,
asking whether the State Department adequately searched for records
responsive to our request.
- John Hackett, former Director of Information Programs and Services
(IPS) testified under
oath that he had raised concerns that former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton’s staff may have “culled out 30,000” of the secretary’s
“personal” emails without following strict National Archives standards.
He also revealed that he believed there was interference with the formal
FOIA review process related to the classification of Clinton’s
Benghazi-related emails.
- We deposed State
Department official Monica Tillery, asking whether the State Department’s
intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad
faith.
- We deposed Clarence
Finney, the deputy director of the Executive Secretariat staff who was
the principal
advisor and records management expert in the Office of the
Secretary responsible for control of all correspondence and records for
Clinton and other State Department officials.
- Jonathon Wasser, the State Department employee who conducted Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) searches during part of Hillary Clinton’s
tenure as Secretary of State testified that
he did not clearly recollect whether he had any knowledge of potential
email addresses for Secretary Clinton.
- Ben Rhodes, former Obama White House deputy strategic communications
adviser, continued to blame an online
video for the Benghazi attacks, claims he doesn’t remember using
personal email for official business and that he wasn’t aware of Hillary
Clinton using her non-government email for official State Department
business before press reports made the fact public.
- We deposed State
Department lawyer Gene Smilansky regarding whether the State Department’s
intent to settle the case in 2014 and 2015 amounted to bad faith.
- Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s White House liaison at the State
Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, admitted under
oath that she was granted immunity by the Department of Justice in June
2016.
- Former State Department Director of the Office of Information Programs
and Services Sheryl Walter stated that
she did not recall a call from the Obama White House asking for “quick
turnaround” of information concerning a FOIA request on former Secretary
Clinton’s use of personal email to conduct official business.
- We deposed Elissa
Pitterle, the corporate representative assigned by the State Department to
address questions concerning the processing of FOIA requests.
- We deposed Tasha
Marie Thian, former records officer of the Records and Archives Management
Division in the State Department, who testified: “I had been told
repeatedly that [Clinton] did not use email for work” and therefore the
records-management office “operated as if she did not use [email].” She
said that Finney informed her Clinton used her personal email about
Benghazi when she told him she was leaving in April 2014.
- We deposed Patrick
Scholl, a FOIA public liaison at the State Department.
- We deposed Jamie
Bair, an attorney in the Office of the Legal Adviser who was assigned to
our FOIA request and lawsuit. Bair testified that he first learned about
Clinton’s email address shortly after joining the State Department in
April 2014 and that he saw it while reviewing documents for Congressional
requests regarding Benghazi. Bair said he informed his supervisor, Matt
Burton. Bair testified that he told DOJ attorney Rob Prince about
Clinton’s email address but would not provide a timeframe. He also
testified that his normal practice was to be in close touch with DOJ
attorneys on any given case.
The judge told us to “shake
this tree.” And we are. Just imagine if we had not been so
relentless!
Merry Christmas!
Christmas 2019 finds the foundations of our republic under attack.
So, at a time like this, it may be best to step back and try to focus our
hearts and minds on things that unite us.
As we do, I am reminded of one of my favorite stories from Christmas past.
It’s a story that proves anew that the essential message of Christmas –
“Hail the newborn Prince of Peace.” This is as powerful today as it is
poignant, as timely as it is timeless. It’s the tale of a truce … a
brief, fleeting truce … that turned a World War I field of fire into a
pageant of peace. As Time magazine reported it several years
ago:
On a crisp, clear morning 100 years ago, thousands of British, Belgian
and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches
and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the Western
front.
***
Most accounts suggest the truce began with carol singing from the
trenches on Christmas Eve, “a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the
ground, white almost everywhere”, as Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second
Queens Regiment recalled,
in a document later rounded up by the New York Times.
Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade described
it in even greater detail:
“First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would
sing one of ours, until when we started up ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’
the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words
Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary
thing – two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a
war.”
The next morning, in some places, German soldiers emerged from their
trenches, calling out “Merry Christmas” in English. Allied soldiers
came out warily to greet them. In others, Germans held up signs reading
“You no shoot, we no shoot.” Over the course of the day, troops
exchanged gifts of cigarettes, food, buttons and hats. The Christmas truce
also allowed both sides to finally bury their dead comrades, whose bodies
had lain for weeks on “no man’s land,” the ground between opposing
trenches.
I believe you will agree that there is a lesson to be learned there – an
enduring lesson that transcends the temporal and, especially at this time
of year, elevates us above the trials and traumas that beset us. It is the
Christmas message of “Peace on earth,” which caused the bloodied and
battered Allied and German soldiers to lay aside their enmity and arms and
“sing in exultation … joyful and triumphant.”
Truly, as rifleman Graham Williams wrote, the spirit of Christmas “is
really a most extraordinary thing.” There is one particularly
extraordinary Christmas message that should give us indomitable courage
even in these troubling times. It’s from Isaiah 9:6, and it defines the
hope that lies within us all: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son
is given – and the government shall be upon his
shoulders.”
Ultimately, man’s power is limited on this Earth, contrary to what some
politicians and their antecedents might try to tell you. Even in the most
dire of times, we rest secure in the words of one of my favorite Christmas
carols, “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail.”
Merry Christmas (and Happy Chanukah!) to you and yours from all of us
here at Judicial Watch.
Until next week …
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