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Feds fight to prevent Clinton deposition in email case
27
May, 2016
The
Obama administration is trying to prevent former Secretary of
State Hillary
Clinton from
being deposed in an ongoing open records case connected to her use of
a private email server.
Late
Thursday evening, the Justice Department filed a court motion
opposing the Clinton deposition request
from conservative legal watchdog Judicial
Watch, claiming that the organization was trying to dramatically
expand the scope of the lawsuit.
Judicial
Watch is “seeking instead to transform these proceedings into a
wide-ranging inquiry into matters beyond the scope of the court’s
order and unrelated to the FOIA request at issue in this case,”
government lawyers wrote in their
filing,
referring to the Freedom of Information Act.
The
lawyers wrote that the request to interview Clinton “is wholly
inappropriate” before depositions are finished in a separate case
also concerning the email server.
Judicial
Watch’s FOIA case began as a way to seek documents about talking
points related to the 2012 terror attack on U.S. facilities in
Benghazi, Libya, but has since grown to encompass wider questions
about Clinton’s use of a personal server while working as secretary
of State.
Last
week, Judicial Watch asked the court to interview Clinton and five
other current and former State Department officials about the server,
after it received a judge's
permission to
move ahead with the process.
The
case is the second in which Judicial Watch has been granted approval
to depose witnesses to gather evidence about Clinton’s email setup.
In the other case, interviews of current and former Clinton aides
have already begun.
Clinton
is not scheduled to answer questions as part of that case, through a
federal judge has warned that she
could be called upon in
the future.
In
the government’s filing late Thursday, the Justice Department said
that Judicial Watch’s request is “overbroad and duplicative.”
Instead,
it claimed, the group should complete the depositions in the other
case first before demanding an interview of Clinton and the other
officials.
However,
the department did say that it would not oppose a request to subpoena
Jake Sullivan, a former senior State Department official and current
top aide in Clinton’s presidential campaign, as long as questions
were “on the limited topic” of officials using personal email
accounts at the department.
The
department also said it would be willing to provide an unnamed
witness to provide answers on behalf of the State Department in
response to narrow questions about the FOIA request at the heart of
the case.
That
solution, government lawyers claimed, would “avoid the burden and
expense” of going through a deposition process “that replicates
activities already underway in another, overlapping case between the
parties.”
Obama Steps In To Defend Hillary: DOJ
Fights To Block Clinton Deposition
If
there was any doubt, or suspense on which side of the Hillary email
scandal the "impartial" Department of Justice stands, the
suspense was lifted and all was revealed yesterday when asThe
Hill reported,
the Obama administration stepped into the ongoing Judicial Watch
lawsuit and is fighting to prevent former SecState Hillary Clinton
from being deposed.
Late
Thursday evening the Justice Department, under US attorney general
Loretta Lynch, first appointed in 1999 by none other than Bill
Clinton, filed
a court motion opposing the Clinton deposition request from
conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch, claiming that the
organization was trying to dramatically expand the scope of the
lawsuit....[
]
First deposition in email scandal reveals Clinton’s computer illiteracy
Clinton
is under investigation for her use of a private email server. ©
Stephen Lam / Reuters
RT,
28
May, 2016
A
transcript of the first deposition in the Hillary Clinton email
scandal has revealed that the Democratic Presidential hopeful did not
know how to use email on a computer, nor did she use a password.
Judicial Watch
FYI: the @JudicialWatch deposition of #Clinton aide Cheryl Mills is taking place right now. We will be updating the public next week on this
Clinton’s
computer illiteracy was detailed in the deposition from US Ambassador
Lewis Lukens conducted on May 18 and released Thursday.
In
the sworn testimony, Lukens, who was a State Department official
responsible for logistics and management support during Clinton’s
tenure as Secretary of State, said he was advised that Clinton did
not “know
how to use a computer to do e-mail,” only
a Blackberry.
Lukens
offered to provide training to Clinton so she could access her email
on a desktop computer but said he was told“the
Secretary is very comfortable checking her e-mails on a Blackberry.”
The
use of personal phones in the Secretary’s official office suite is
prohibited but according to Lukens, Clinton’s aide Cheryl Mills
suggested a workaround, requesting he set up a “space
for her to go check her BlackBerry.”
FYI: the @JudicialWatch deposition of #Clinton aide Cheryl Mills is taking place right now. We will be updating the public next week on this
When
asked if he saw Clinton using her BlackBerry in the office hallway,
Lukens said he did on several occasions.
Lukens
also revealed she failed to use a password to protect her computer.
“So
the computer would have just been open and be able to use without
going through any security features?” Lukens
was asked, to which he responded “Correct.”
RT America
'Easily & Repeatedly’: Romanian hacker on gaining access to Hillary Clinton’s server
His
testimony also revealed that Clinton was not the first Secretary of
State to not have an email address setup on the Department of State
system, admitting “I’m
not aware of former Secretaries of State having e-mail addresses on
our system.”
Clinton
used Lukens revelation to justify her actions, telling ABC that
the "report
makes clear that personal email use was the practice for other
Secretaries of State. It was allowed. And the rules have been
clarified since I left."
Ben Cardinal
@ABC If you violate the email policy in any other government job, you will be fired or disciplined. She won't though
Lukens
is the first of at least six witnesses to be deposed in relation to
Clinton’s use of a private email server for official
correspondence.
Cheryl
Mills testified on Friday but the transcript has yet to be released.
Washington
DC’s District Court ruled earlier this week that video and audio of
the depositions would not be released so they could not be used “as
part of a partisan attack.”
The
FBI is currently investigating whether or not Hillary Clinton’s
email practices constituted a threat to national security after it
was revealed she was using a private email server while serving as
Secretary of State.
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