The Clinton email matter is important, and Judicial Watch is, of course, at the center of the story. Check out this New York Times article, which shows that the FBI and Judicial Watch are the only two entities in DC likely to get answers and accountability on the Clinton email issue:
Last week Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of United States District Court in Washington allowed the questioning after a hearing in which he criticized the State Department’s “constant drip” of revelations about emails from the server and said there were many unanswered questions about who authorized its use.
“It just boggles the mind that the State Department allowed this circumstance to arise in the first place,” said Judge Sullivan, who was appointed to the District Court in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and to lower courts by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. “It’s just very, very, very troubling.”
He ordered lawyers for Judicial Watch to submit a “narrowly tailored” plan for questioning that could begin in April as primaries continue to be held in states like New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
The organization, according to its court filings so far, is expected to seek depositions from Ms. Abedin and Mr. Pagliano; Mrs. Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills; and department officials like Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management.
Judge Sullivan’s ruling left open the possibility of additional testimony, including testimony from Mrs. Clinton. “I think there are some legitimate issues that arise because of this very atypical system that was created,” he said.
So, as the FBI gets going – thanks, I’m convinced, to the fact that Judicial Watch may question witnesses over the next few months – the Clinton email scandal may come to a head sooner rather than later.
That being said, the Clinton email scandal is just one of the major DC scandals angering law-and-order Americans. Don’t think for a minute that we’ve forgotten the “scandal for the ages,” the Obama IRS suppression of conservatives and the Tea Party. I have an update for you on the compromised Obama Justice Department, which did so much to cover up the scandal for Barack Obama.
We are now asking a federal appellate court to overturn a lower court’s ruling allowing the Obama Justice Department to withhold records detailing the number of hours that agency attorney Barbara Bosserman expended on the investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. We filed the appellate brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last month.
This is the lawsuit that forced the Obama Justice Department to confirm the existence of a criminal investigation into the IRS’s abuses and that Bosserman, a major donor to Obama’s political campaigns and the Democratic National Committee, was part of the team of lawyers criminally investigating the issue. (On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department announced in a letter that it would not press any charges over the IRS abuse scandal.)
In 2014, Judicial Watch filed a 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records detailing the number of hours Bosserman expended on the IRS matter. In 2015, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the agency had properly withheld the Bosserman records under the “attorney work product doctrine.” Judicial Watch argues to the appellate court:
[T]he Department presented no evidence whatsoever that the records requested by Judicial Watch were created in anticipation of litigation. The District Court also did not make such a finding. Instead the Department argued and the court ruled that some of the information contained in the responsive records was protected by the attorney work product doctrine. Because the requested records were created in the ordinary course of business – to assist senior officials in their management responsibilities – the records do not fall within the scope of the attorney work product doctrine. The records are being improperly withheld in their entirety.
In early January 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly appointed Bosserman to oversee the IRS investigation despite her substantial political activities. According to Federal Election Commission records, Bosserman contributed $6,750 to Obama’s campaigns and the DNC from 2004 to 2012, including 12 separate contributions to Obama for America between 2008 and 2012. Then-House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darryl Issa (R-CA) called the Bosserman appointment “a startling conflict of interest [that has] compromised the Administration’s investigation of the IRS.”
All Judicial Watch wants is the number of hours that the Obama donor/Justice Department lawyer spent investigating the worst IRS abuse in American history. The failure to bring charges in the IRS scandal only adds to the public interest in finding out more details about the involvement of the Obama/Democratic Party donor in the criminal investigation.
The media may yawn when two Republicans candidates for the presidency, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, complain of Obama IRS audits. But it suggests Obama’s IRS corruption never ended. As with the Clinton email scandal, Judicial Watch has a large number of active lawsuits and investigations into the Obama IRS matter. Washington politicians from both political parties want to move on, but we are on the case. In fact, we have more material in the hopper to release over the next few weeks. So watch this space for additional developments.
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