Court Grants Significant New Discovery in Clinton Email Case

We have won a significant victory in our pursuit of the truth about Hillary Clinton’s misuse of official email and the Deep State’s efforts to cover it up.

A federal judge granted us seven additional depositions, three interrogatories and four document requests related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private, unauthorized email server. 

Hillary Clinton and her former top aide and current lawyer Cheryl Mills were given 30 days to oppose being deposed by Judicial Watch (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)).

The court rejected Justice and State Department arguments to protect Mrs. Clinton and the agencies from additional discovery and ordered agency lawyers to respond to our questions about their knowledge of the Clinton email issue. The court granted all of our requested discovery but gave Clinton and Mills 30 days to file any opposition to the requests to question them in person under oath.

The new court-ordered discovery allows us to take testimony and gather evidence of Clinton’s handling of emails, specifically in an “after action memo” drafted by Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s senior advisor at State and White House liaison. The memo was created in December 2014 to memorialize the Clinton team’s processing of the Clinton emails. The discovery also asks when Justice and State Department attorneys learned about Clinton’s private email use; and what senior records-keeping officials at the State Department knew about Clinton’s emails and when they knew it. 

This past Friday, we submitted the document request to Hillary Clinton’s attorneys for the “after action memo” that Samuelson created.

The court specifically raised concerns about a Clinton email cache recently discussed in a letter to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and wants Judicial Watch to “shake the tree” on this issue.

We uncovered the Clinton email scandal and we just found more evidence that raises further questions about the cover-up – which is why the court allowed us to pursue more leads and potentially question Mrs. Clinton under oath. As ordered by the court, we will continue to “shake the tree” on the Clinton email issue. It is shameful that the Justice and State Departments oppose our efforts and are still trying to provide cover for Hillary Clinton.

Additionally, on Friday, August 23, Judicial Watch submitted interrogatories to Department of Justice attorney Robert Prince to find out when he learned about the State Department requesting and receiving emails and federal records from Clinton and to the State Department to identify officials and documents that have been uncovered, but not identified. We also submitted a document request to the State Department for records reviewed in response to Gawker’s 2013 FOIA request for communications from Hillary Clinton’s email accounts sent to Sidney Blumenthal.

Here is some background.

On December 6, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers and Clinton aides 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.” 

The court ordered discovery into three specific areas: 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.

Our discovery over the last several months found many more details about the scope of the Clinton email scandal and cover-up:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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 BlackBerrys and personal emails to transmit classified material.

• It is an “illegal local regulation of immigration;”
• It is “preempted by federal law;” and
• It is “barred by the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity,” which prevents a state from intruding on the federal government’s sovereignty.

Here is the horrific story behind our lawsuit.

On February 28, 2019, Bambi Larson, a Santa Clara County resident, was murdered inside her San Jose home. According to court documents, she suffered extensive and deep wounds consistent with a cutting tool. A few weeks later, Carlos Arevalo-Carranza was arrested and charged with Larson’s murder. Arevalo-Carranza reportedly had multiple, prior convictions in Santa Clara County, including a conviction for burglary in 2015, convictions for battery of an officer, resisting arrest, and entering a property in 2016, and a conviction for false imprisonment in 2017. 

He also reportedly had multiple, prior arrests in 2015-2018 in both Santa Clara County and Los Angeles County, including arrests for possession of drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine, prowling, and false identification. At the time of Larson’s death, Arevalo-Carranza reportedly was on probation for possession of drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine, false imprisonment, and burglary.

ICE officials had sent six separate requests to Santa Clara County, when Arevalo-Carranza was about to be released from its custody, asking that he be detained long enough for federal immigration officials to take him into custody for removal proceedings. Each request was ignored because of Santa Clara County’s sanctuary policies.

In March 2019, San Jose officials reportedly “criticized so-called sanctuary policies they say prevented federal authorities from detaining a gang member in the country illegally before he allegedly killed a woman.” The murderer was a, “self-admitted gang member,” with a “long criminal history in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles spanning five years.”

Sanctuary policies are illegal and deadly. We have been a leader (and often the only) legal opponent to sanctuary policies that ignore federal and state laws concerning immigration at the expense of the public’s safety, the rule of law, and our national security. Our new taxpayer lawsuit simply seeks to stop tax dollars from being spent on a sanctuary policy that harms public safety and undermines the rule of law.

Chris Farrell to Host “On Watch” on the One America News Network

One America News will broadcast a special edition of “Chris Farrell’s On Watch” with an expert panel on this Saturday and Sunday at 5 pm ET. 

Chris’s special guest this week is Senior Judicial Watch Attorney Ramona Cotca, who will bring us up to date on our recent victory in a lawsuit seeking answers to questions surrounding former Secretary Clinton’s email server. Was the non-government server intended to stymie the Freedom of Information Act? Did the State Department’s first attempt to settle this case amount to “bad faith?” And has the State Department – to this day – adequately searched for records?

Also joining the show is Senior Attorney Robert Popper, who heads up our Election Integrity Project. He will provide updates on our victories in Los Angeles and Kentucky in our fight to clean up voter rolls.

Check for show times in your area: https://www.oann.com/wheretowatch/

You’ll see from my colleagues Chris, Ramona, and Bob why Judicial Watch is so successful. These experienced professionals and the rest of the Judicial Watch team are part of the secret to our success to holding the government accountable to the rule of law.

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