A Republic Under Assault Page 17

  Did the Department merely fear what might be found? Or was State’s bungling just the unfortunate result of bureaucratic red-tape and a failure to communicate? To preserve the Department’s integrity, and to reassure the American people their government remains committed to transparency and the rule of law, this suspicion cannot be allowed to fester.

  This is the sort of concern about the rule of law we should have been hearing from the Justice Department and State Department after President Trump came to power. But as you can see, nothing changed with the end of the Obama presidency. In fact, the agencies continued to mislead the court and defend Hillary Clinton’s emails misconduct!

  Even after Judge Lamberth’s tongue-lashings, the DOJ and State still fought us—objecting to our asking any more questions about the Clinton emails and the outrageous Benghazi scandal. Nonetheless, we proceeded to discovery gathering new blockbuster documents and important and shocking testimony:

  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 nongovernment 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 nongovernment 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.

  Lauren Jiloty, former special assistant to then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton, admitted in written responses under oath to loading contacts on Clinton’s unsecure BlackBerry. Jiloty also said that she conducted official State Department business from her own personal email account.

  Obama national security advisor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice admitted in written responses given under oath that she emailed with former secretary of state Clinton on Clinton’s nongovernment email account and that she received emails related to government business on her own personal email account.

  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. (More on Hackett’s testimony below.)

  We deposed Clarence Finney, the deputy director of the Executive Secretariat staff, who was the principal advisor and records management expert in the Office of the Secretary responsible for control of all correspondence and records for Clinton and other State Department officials.

  Jonathon Wasser, the State Department employee who conducted FOIA searches during part of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, testified that he did not clearly recollect whether he had any knowledge of potential email addresses for Secretary Clinton.

  Ben Rhodes, former Obama White House deputy strategic communications advisor, who continued to blame an online video for the Benghazi attacks, claims he doesn’t remember using personal email for official business, and says that he wasn’t aware of Hillary Clinton using her nongovernment email for official State Department business before press reports made the fact public.

  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.

  Former State Department director of the Office of Information Programs and Services Sheryl Walter stated that she did not recall a call from the Obama White House asking for “quick turnaround” of information concerning a FOIA request on former Secretary Clinton’s use of personal email to conduct official business.

  We deposed Elissa Pitterle, the corporate representative assigned by the State Department to address questions concerning the processing of FOIA requests.

  We deposed Tasha Marie Thian, former records officer of the Records and Archives Management Division in the State Department, who testified: “I had been told repeatedly that [Clinton] did not use email for work” and therefore the records-management office “operated as if she did not use [email].” She said that a key FOIA official informed her Clinton used her personal email about Benghazi when she told him she was leaving in April 2014.

  We deposed Jamie Bair, an attorney in the Office of the Legal Adviser who was assigned to our FOIA request and lawsuit. Bair testified that he first learned about Clinton’s email address shortly after joining the State Department in April 2014 and that he saw it while reviewing documents for congressional requests regarding Benghazi. Bair said he informed his supervisor, Matt Burton. Bair testified that he told DOJ attorney Rob Prince about Clinton’s email address but would not provide a time frame. He also testified that his normal practice was to be in close touch with DOJ attorneys on any given case.

  You can see that our work here was as comprehensive as possible and certainly much more honest than the conflicted, corrupted, and compromised Obama DOJ/FBI “investigation” of the Clinton email issue. In fact, we kept finding evidence that the DOJ and State Department were neck-deep in the cover-up.

  NEW BENGHAZI DOCUMENTS CONFIRM CLINTON EMAIL COVER-UP

  Just last year, more than four years after we first uncovered Clinton’s email scheme, we forced the release of new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account in 2014 if the emails had been released when the State Department first uncovered them. The Clinton email in question was first identified by the State Department in September 2014, but was withheld from us despite its specific reference to Benghazi talking points—the very issue we had sued about! Even after a court had ordered its production. It was only after we informed the State Department we were prepared to file a motion with the court to compel production of the records that the agency relented and produced the email in question.

  In September 2019, the State Department provided us a previously hidden email, which shows top State Department officials used and were aware of Hillary Clinton’s email account, and that “she guards it pretty closely.”

  The September 2012 email chain begins with an email to Clinton at her private email address, “hdr22@clintonemail.com,” from Jacob Sullivan, Clinton’s then senior advisor and deputy chief of staff. The email was copied to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s then chief of staff, and forwarded to then–deputy assistant secretary of state for strategic communications and Clinton advisor Philippe Reines:

  From: Sullivan, Jacob J

  Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 11 :09 AM

  To: ‘hdr22@clintonemail.com’

  Cc: Mills, Cheryl D

  Subject: Key points

  HRC, Cheryl –

  Below is my stab at tp’s for the Senator call. Cheryl, I’ve left the last point blank for you. These are rough but you get the point.

  I look forward to sitting down and having a Hillary-to-John conversation about what we know. l know you were frustrated by the briefing we did and I’m sorry our hands were tied in that setting.

  It’s important we see each other in person, but over the phone today I just wanted to make a few points.

  First, we have been taking this deadly seriously, as we should. I set up the ARB in record time, with serious people on it.
l will get to the bottom of all the security questions. We are also in overdrive working to track down the killers, and not just through the FBI. We will get this right.

  Second, the White House and Susan were not making things up. They were going with what they were told by the IC [intelligence community].

  The real story may have been obvious to you from the start (and indeed I called it an assault by heavily armed militants in my first statement), but the IC gave us very different information. They were unanimous about it.

  Let me read you an email from the day before Susan went on the shows. It provides the talking points for HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and for her public appearance. It’s from a very senior official at CIA, copying his counterparts at DNI [Director of National Intelligence], NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center], and FBI:

  Here are the talking points…

  The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.

  This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.

  The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of US citizens.

  That is exactly what Susan said, following the guidance from the IC. She obviously got bad advice. But she was not shading the truth.

  Third, you have to remember that the video WAS important. We had four embassies breached because of protests inspired by it. Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum, and Sanaa. We had serious security challenges in Pakistan and Chennai and some other places. All this was happening at the same time. So many of the contemporaneous comments about the video weren’t referring in any way to Benghazi. Now of course even in those countries it was about much much more than the video, but the video was certainly a piece of it one we felt we had to speak to so that our allies in those countries would back us up.

  (In fact, as Judicial Watch famously uncovered in 2014, the “talking points” that provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false statements were created by the Obama White House.)

  Again, Judicial Watch requested records related to the Benghazi talking points in May 2014. In July 2014, it filed suit. The Clinton email finally released was first identified by the State Department in September 2014 but was withheld from Judicial Watch despite it specifically referencing talking points. So both the State Department and DOJ had been covering up a smoking gun for years. This is not just a Clinton scandal, it is a government corruption scandal of the first order. They hid evidence about who knew what and when about one of the most significant terrorist attacks in American history!

  BLOCKBUSTER TESTIMONY ABOUT THOSE MISSING EMAILS

  The missing Clinton emails case was like a thread you pull at from a suit and it just keeps unraveling, and unraveling, and unraveling with no end in sight.

  But, to get it started, someone has to pull at the thread in the first place. That was us.

  No matter what the State Department or any other government agency or individual under suspicion said or says, Judicial Watch investigates and verifies everything.

  Roadblocks and obstacles put in our path encourage us to do more.

  With exactly that strategy and mission in mind, Judicial Watch attorneys grabbed a significant portion of that thread when they obtained blockbuster testimony from former State Department official John Hackett, who was director for Information Programs and Services (IPS), which handles records management at the State Department.Hackett testified under oath that he had raised concerns about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

  Her staff had “culled out 30,000” of the secretary’s “personal” emails without following strict National Archives standards, he said in his deposition.

  His testimony came as part of the series of Judge Lamberth–ordered depositions and questions under oath of senior Obama-era State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides.

  Hackett also revealed that he believed there was interference with the formal FOIA review process related to the classification of Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails.

  Hackett served first as deputy director then as director for Information Programs and Services, which handles the FOIA request program and the retirement of and declassification of documents at the State Department. He was at the department from April 2013 to March 2016.

  In March 2015, Clinton told reporters that she and her staff had deleted more than 30,000 emails “because they were personal and private about matters that I believed were within the scope of my personal privacy.” ABC News reported: “However, after a year-long investigation, the FBI recovered more than 17,000 emails that had been deleted or otherwise not turned over to the State Department, and many of them were work-related, the FBI has said.” Hackett recalled a conversation about requesting rules or parameters from Secretary Clinton or her attorneys that they used to segregate her personal and official work emails.

  Hackett: I recall it wasn’t much of a conversation. I—I was—I mean, I have to say, it was emphatic to the Under Secretary of Management—and I didn’t speak in tones like that very often to him—you know, that we needed these—you know, the guidelines.

  Judicial Watch: And when you said, the Under Secretary, are you referring to Patrick Kennedy [then–Under Secretary of State for Management]?

  Hackett: Yes.

  Hackett: I think I might have raised it to Rich Visek, the acting office of Legal Advisor, or Peggy—or Margaret Grafeld [an executive-level State Department FOIA official] raised it to Rich, as well.

  Judicial Watch: Why did you feel so strongly that this was necessary, that they provide this information?

  Hackett: Well, we heard that there were 50,000 or 60,000 emails, and that they had—“they” being the secretary’s team—had culled out 30,000 of these. And which is—so we wanted to know what criteria they used. The standard from the National Archives is very strict. If there was—if there were mixed records, that would be considered a federal record. If it was mixed personal and mentioned a discussion, that would be—under the narrow National Archives rules, it would be considered a federal record.

  Judicial Watch: And do you know if the emails that were returned by Secretary Clinton and her attorneys, if they followed that guideline to include an email that would include mixed information, personal and official?

  Hackett: I don’t know.

  Judicial Watch: Was a request ever made by Patrick Kennedy or anybody else who you raised this to?

  Hackett: Ambassador Kennedy told me he would ask for the—the guidelines.

  Judicial Watch: Do you know if the guidelines were ever provided to Patrick Kennedy?

  Hackett: Not during my tenure at the State Department.

  In August 2014 the State Department sent some documents to the Benghazi Select Committee that included a small number of Clinton emails. Hackett was alerted about this. Hackett was asked if the State Department attorney who gave him the heads-up asked why he was providing the information. Hackett answered: “I think only because he knew that there was going to be publicity involved relating to this.”

  We also asked Hackett about his concerns over 296 of Secretary Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails that were made available to Congress. Hackett testified that he had concerns regarding Catherine Duval, an attorney who worked for the Office of Legislative affairs (and who was also involved in the Obama-era IRS scandal):

  Judicial Watch: And what was—what was your concern there, if you can elaborate?

  Hackett: The concern was, in the 296 that there were other agencies’ equities in those documents, you know, potentially classified information. But any release decisions—and doing a FOIA review, we would normall
y make a referral back to that home agency. And Ms. Duval seemed to imply that she had already done that kind of coordination. But when we asked who she had coordinated with, they were people not familiar in our regular FOIA process.

  Judicial Watch: And that’s people, when you—the people you are referring to, that’s—is it within just one agency, or is that dispersed through different agencies?

  Hackett: It would be different agencies.

  Hackett: Again, I mean, we were familiar with the—our—our parallel shops, you know, in other agencies, similar to IPS; we knew all the players there, the other directors of the office. And, so, we contacted them, and they have not received any referrals from her. So we wondered who she was working with.

  We also asked Hackett if, as he had previously stated, he “believed there was interference with the formal FOIA review process” in 2014? Hackett said he believed “that some bureaus were convinced, or—and analysts were convinced, once it was explained to them, to redact something but use a B5 exemption [which applies to deliberative process and allows government officials to discuss policy without the discussions being made public, or attorney-client privilege] versus a B1 [national security] exemption.”

  When we asked if he thought that was appropriate, Hackett responded, “No, I didn’t,” and said he voiced that concern to his boss, Margaret Grafeld.

  Hackett testified that his initial concern over Secretary Clinton’s email use arose in June 2013 when he said he viewed a photograph on the WTOP website of Clinton “sitting on a plane with a BlackBerry. “And that got me thinking that, well, what—what was that BlackBerry? Was it a government BlackBerry? And if so, where were the emails relating to that BlackBerry?” Hackett said.

  Hackett testified he went to then-IPS director Sheryl Walter “after seeing that photograph and suggested that we had to be careful about what sort of responses we made relating to Hillary Clinton’s emails, when it—if there was a No Record Located response that was being given out. In fact, I advised Sheryl that we should stop giving No Record Located responses until we come to—kind of come, you know—find out what that BlackBerry meant, come to ground about what was known about the former Secretary’s emailing habits.”