In January 2019, U.S. District Court
Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Judicial Watch’s court-ordered
discovery into Hillary Clinton email usage and whether or not she
used a private email system to sidestep the Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) could begin. The court-ordered discovery was also to
answer the question if Obama's State Department acted in “bad
faith” by failing to communicate knowledge of the email system. It
was ruled that senior officials from the Obama State Department,
lawyers, and Clinton aides will give written testimony under oath to
all of Judicial Watch’s written questions. Senior officials include
Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Jacob Sullivan, and FBI official E.W.
Priestap. Discovery was scheduled to be completed within 120 days.
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On Friday, May 10, 2019, Judicial Watch
announced they obtained 44 pages of records from the Obama's State
Department through the court-ordered discovery. The records revealed
that the Obama White House had involvement in the then-Secretary of
State Clinton's personal unsecured email use by tracking all December
2012 FOIA requests. The records showed that months later, the State
Department responded to the FOIA request by Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) by falsely stating the
records could not be located. The court-ordered discovery obtained
records that gives evidence that the Obama White House probably not
only orchestrated the Clinton unsecured email cover-up but knew as
early as December 2012 that when the then-Secretary of State Clinton
was questioned about her email usage, she out-right lied to the
public.
E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant
director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, had testified in
April 2019, to Judicial Watch President Fitton, in writing and under
oath, that the agency had indeed found Clinton email records in the
Executive Office of President Obama. Priestap also said his
department reviewed around 49,000 of Clinton emails from her private
email server during their investigation of former Rep. Weiner (D-NY)
laptop.
It was at this
time that Fitton, in a interview with Newsmax TV, accused the Justice
Department of a “sham investigation to protect Clinton and Obama
and target Trump.”
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton
stated, a federal court granted the discovery to Judicial Watch
because the court also wanted answers to the question, was there a
government cover-up concerning Clinton emails. Earlier this year,
Judicial Watch, under a January 2018 FOIA lawsuit, obtained 186 pages
of records from the Justice Department that when examined also turned
up emails documenting possibly violations of law that Clinton tried
to cover-up.
