Lawsuit seeks 'chart of the statutory violations' by Hillary Clinton
Washington watchdog Judicial Watch, which has been key to demanding access to government documents about the scandal of Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, now is going to court to obtain a copy of the FBI’s list of “statutory violations” she may have committed.
“Judicial Watch will continue to press for the chart the FBI has been hiding which details possible violations of law by Hillary Clinton,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in his organization’s announcement of the case on Tuesday.
“Now that the Mueller investigation has ended, the FBI has the time and manpower to focus on an investigation of Clinton unencumbered by Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page and their anti-Trump colleagues.”
The organization said it has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice for “draft copies of FBI charts containing information on potential ‘statutory violations’ committed by Hillary Clinton in the former secretary of state’s use of a non-secure, non-government email server to conduct government business.”
That scandal erupted while Barack Obama was president, and shook those Washington insiders who realized government secrets very easily could have been seen by enemies of the nation.
Clinton ran state secrets through the private email service she had set up and used for official government business while she ran the State Department.
“Judicial Watch is also suing for draft copies of talking points prepared by the FBI for its officials to use following then-Director James Comey’s July 2016 press conference during which he recommended against prosecuting Clinton for mishandling classified information,” Judicial Watch said.
Comey, in revealing the results of the FBI investigation at the time, took the very unusual step of assuming the role of a prosecutor, too, in announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would pursue charges for the offenses that were uncovered.
He later reopened the investigation, when he found more of Clinton’s emails on a computer belonging to an aide, and then just days later closed it again with no changes in the results.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 3, 2018, FOIA request.
The organization is seeking: “All final and draft copies of talking points prepared by the FBI for its Executive Assistant Directors (EADs) relating to the ‘Mid-Year Exam’ investigation (“MYE Talking Points) following the July 5, 2016 James Comey press conference in which he indicated he would not recommend prosecuting Hillary Clinton. All final draft copies of a one-page version of the aforementioned MYE Talking Points created for FBI Special Agents-in-Charge (SACs). All final and draft copies of charts of the “statutory violations considered during the investigation [of Hillary Clinton’s server], and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute.”
Judicial Watch reported it had discovered, during the course of a different lawsuit, that just days after Comey insisted no charges be filed against Clinton, the “Special Counsel to the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the National Security Branch, whose name is redacted, wrote to [then-FBI agent Peter] Strzok and others that he was producing a ‘chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation [of Clinton’s server], and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute…'”
Judicial Watch said, “Neither these talking points nor the chart of potential violations committed by Clinton and her associates have been released.”
The organization reported only a week ago that the Obama White House knew about the scandal earlier than previously admitted and tried to cover it up.
Documents, obtained from the State Department through court-ordered discovery, “suggest the Obama White House knew about the Clinton email lies being told to the public at least as early as December 2012,” the watchdog group said.
A federal court granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton emails “because the court wanted answers about a government cover-up of the Clinton emails.”
“And now we have answers, because it looks like the Obama White House orchestrated the Clinton email cover-up,” Judicial Watch said.
WND reported in April a senior FBI official, E.W. Priestap, admitted under oath the bureau found emails sent from Clinton’s unsecured server in President Obama’s executive office in the White House.
Fitton said at the time that the confirmation made under oath showed that the
Obama FBI had to go to President Obama’s White House office “to find emails that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy or hide from the American people.”
Fitton was referring to the more than 30,000 emails under subpoena that were thoroughly deleted through an application called BleachBit by order of Clinton’s State Department team.
When Comey announced in July 2016 that the FBI had decided not to refer criminal charges in the case, he nevertheless said Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information.
More than 100 emails on her server contained classified information, including 65 emails deemed “Secret” and 22 “Top Secret.” Another 2,093 emails were retroactively marked classified by the State Department.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, Clinton aides and FBI official Priestap to be deposed or answer written questions under oath.
The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
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