(Judicial Watch) - The Obama administration’s fraud, misconduct and misrepresentation on the Hillary Clinton email scandal continues in federal court. Crafty, corrupt politicians realize that transparency and accountability go hand-in-hand. So that is why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (with the federal bureaucracies at their beck and call) have a personal and political interest in keeping their records away from the American people – even if it means violating the federal transparency law: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
So it will not surprise you to learn that Hillary Clinton’s former colleagues at the Obama State Department (with the help of taxpayer-funded lawyers in the Justice Department) continue to mislead the court and oppose Judicial Watch’s work to obtain emails and other documents sent by Hillary Clinton and her aides using secret email accounts.
Judicial Watch recently filed a strong brief in federal court, a Reply in Support of a Motion for a Status Conference, that argues that the State Department should be required to inform both Judicial Watch and the court itself “about the details surrounding the retention of agency emails within the Office of the Secretary and the extent of the Department’s ability to search, request and retrieve those records…” in order to avoid “further undue delays, prejudice and potential spoliation” of those documents. The request is before U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who is the judge assigned to what should have been a simple FOIA lawsuit to find out more about Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi cover-up.
In a brief filed last week opposing a court hearing on this issue, the Obama administration argued that there was no need for urgency in resolving the issue, and continued their attempt to stonewall. They want no hearing until at least late April!
With this contemptuous response to our push for transparency, the Obama administration shows that it wants to protect Mrs. Clinton, not enforce the law.
What’s more, this administration is willing to mislead more than one federal court in order to do so. The cover-up continues. Why else would the Obama team fear telling the court immediately about this important issue? What possible harm could one court hearing do!
Continuing the cover-up, State argued that only recently had they been made aware of the secret email accounts, an argument in direct contradiction with the department’s previous statements and as we note, Mrs. Clinton’s statement about the issue:
The State Department cannot claim it was unaware of the…failure to records-manage agency emails from the Office of the Secretary. In fact, the “Statement from the Office of Former Secretary Clinton” states that “[h]er usage [of non-“state.gov” email for State Department business] was widely known to the over 100 Department and U.S. government colleagues she emailed.”
Given that the State Department is willing to make misrepresentations about what and when it knew, Judicial Watch accuses the Obama administration (which is using tax dollars to defend this cover-up) of playing games:
The State Department has yet to demonstrate how it is satisfying its obligations under FOIA in light of recent revelations that Secretary Clinton’s emails were not being properly managed, retained and produced. This also applies to emails received or sent by other officials or employees within the Secretary’s office to conduct government business who used non-“state.gov” email addresses. To determine the adequacy of the State Department’s search, both Judicial Watch and the Court should be informed by the Department directly of the details surrounding the retention of agency emails within the Office of the Secretary and the extent of the Department’s ability to search, request and retrieve those records …Had Judicial Watch not challenged the State Department’s search, this case would most likely have been dismissed before any public revelations were made about the unlawful arrangement relating to the State Department’s handling of agency emails during Secretary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department …[T]he State Department has still not responded to Judicial Watch’s request to confirm whether its supplemental search includes all non-“state.gov” email addresses used by other officials or employees within the Secretary’s office for government business …To the extent that Secretary Clinton used her non-“state.gov” email address to communicate with State Department employees outside her office who used “state.gov” email addresses, the State Department would also have to conduct agency wide searches to respond properly to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.
So as Congress gets out of Dodge for a few weeks without having done much of anything to address the massive obstruction of its investigations, your Judicial Watch is in federal court highlighting that quick action is necessary as the Clinton/Obama gang can’t be trusted to keep these emails secure:
Time is of the essence in this case. The statement by former Secretary Clinton during a press conference that she did not preserve approximately 30,000 emails she sent or received through her non-“state.gov” email address she used exclusively to conduct government business is a matter of public record – not [as the State Department alleged] “conjecture.” Only last week, the State Department publically disclosed that it was unable to automatically archive the emails of most of its senior officials until last month. This is also a matter of public record – not conjecture. The State Department has still not informed the Court or Judicial Watch whether it has undertaken any efforts to retrieve agency emails from non-“state.gov” email addresses used by other officials or employees within the Office of the Secretary during the relevant time period or from other employees within the agency. The State Department needs to request these agency records immediately in light of the Department’s history of poor records-management and preservation of agency records.
It is a big, absurd lie – now being peddled by the Justice Department (following Hillary Clinton’s lead) – that Hillary Clinton’s alleged removal of the records would prevent them from being subject to FOIA. There is no precedent for the head of an agency “purposefully rout[ing] a document out of agency possession in order to circumvent a FOIA request.”
We have been down this road before. You may recall our historic FOIA lawsuit against the Clinton Commerce Department. For some background, that FOIA case, sometimes known as Chinagate, uncovered and stopped a scheme by Bill and Hillary Clinton to sell seats on taxpayer-financed trade mission trips in exchange for political contributions.
In that case, Judge Lamberth himself “found that discovery was appropriate where it was ‘designed to explore the extent to which [the Department of Commerce [(“DOC”)]…illegally destroyed and discarded responsive information, and possible methods for recovering whatever responsive information still exists outside of the DOC’s possession.’”
Our current independent litigation exposed the email scandal and just forced, for the first time, the Obama administration to admit accountability for at least some of the records Hillary Clinton concealed from the American people.
The Washington Times, in a story entitled, “White House scrambles to limit damage from Hillary Clinton email scandal, White House attorneys admit in court that messages withheld,” summed up the state of affairs:
Mr. Fitton said the Obama administration is trying to keep the courts from delving too deeply into the situation, but he said plenty of unanswered questions pose tricky problems for the administration and for Mrs. Clinton, who is expected to announce a bid soon for the Democratic presidential nomination.“We still don’t know who has separate email accounts, who had these alias accounts, how many records there are, were records destroyed, who was responsible for these records legally, who in the agency knew about these records, when did the Justice Department know about these records, why wasn’t Judicial Watch aware of these records, why wasn’t the court aware of these records?” Mr. Fitton said.If Mrs. Clinton were a CEO or some other private individual whose records came under scrutiny, Mr. Fitton said, the FBI would have rushed to secure the records and ensure they weren’t being destroyed. The government then would try to recover any lost or deleted records.
Let’s hope the courts take strong action. As with Benghazi, you can expect more results from us than anything you will get from Congress or a liberal media that is in the tank for fellow liberals like Hillary Clinton.
As I write, we’ve pushed for action on this scandal before at least three federal court judges. And our Judicial Watch investigations team just reported to me that, since the scandal broke, our investigators have filed 20 NEW information requests on the Clinton email scandal. If you want the truth about Hillary Clinton (and other corrupt officials are up to), then you’ll want to start with Judicial Watch. As Rush Limbaugh said recently:
“Mrs. Clinton, if you have nothing to hide, will you turn your servers over to Judicial Watch, who issued a Freedom of Information Act request for them?”
http://linkis.com/judicialwatch.org/dBgd6
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