WND Long-running fight includes her private email server scandal under Obama administration
Government watchdog Judicial Watch said Tuesday it has asked a federal court to order Hillary Clinton to turn over a document related to the email scandal while she was secretary of state for Barack Obama.
She was investigated but not charged for transferring classified information through an unsecure home email system.
However, Judicial Watch is still on the case, asking a federal judge in Washington to order Clinton to turn over an “after action memo” created by her personal lawyer, Heather Samuelson.
It “memorialized the search for and processing of the Clinton emails in 2014.”
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Clinton has refused to provide the document, claiming its secrecy is protected by the attorney work product doctrine.
Samuelson reviewed Clinton’s State Department emails, and about half of them were deleted.
The filing comes in a Freedom of Information Act action that seeks records relating to “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack.”
“Judicial Watch famously uncovered in 2014 that the ‘talking points,’ which provided the basis for false statements by then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice, were created by the Obama White House. This FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015,” the organization said.
A judge in 2018 ordered discovery into whether Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to prevent FOIA actions and whether the State Department’s intent to settle the case quickly amounted to bad faith.
The fight over access to records has been going on since.
The court at one point ruled the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
Judge Judge Royce C. Lamberth said last year that Judicial Watch could seek the memo.
“Hillary Clinton doesnât want the court and the American people to know the full truth about her destruction of 33,000 emails,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The evidence show Hillary Clinton knew exactly what she was doing when she hid her emails, took them from the State Department and deleted them. So it is no surprise she is desperate to avoid testifying and turning over what must be a smoking-gun memo on her email deletions.”
Lamberth also has given permission for the watchdog group to do additional discovery, which includes testimony under oath by Clinton and her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills.
Clinton has gone to an appeals court to try to prevent that.
The watchdog also has served a subpoena to force Google to produce all emails, including metadata, from a Google account believed to contain Clinton’s emails.
There might be a lot there.
Judicial Watch noted Platte River Networks’ IT special Paul Combetta apparently used a Google account to transfer Clinton’s emails from a laptop to a Platte River server.
He used the app BleachBit to remove any traces of the emails from the laptop.
But Judicial Watch argues the records still could be available through Google.
Judicial Watch says as part of its investigations it already has learned:
- John Hackett, former director of information programs and services (IPS), testified under oath that he had raised concerns that Clintonâs staff may have âculled out 30,000â of the secretaryâs âpersonalâ emails without following strict National Archives standards. He also believed there was interference with the formal FOIA review process related to the classification of Clintonâs Benghazi-related emails.
- Heather Samuelson, Clintonâs White House liaison at the State Department, and later Clintonâs personal lawyer, admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the Department of Justice in June 2016.
- 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, Clintonâs deputy chief of staff, to create the non-government email system.
- In interrogatory responses, E.W. Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, stated that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House.
