Hillary Clinton Testimony Essential
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| July 29, 2016: This Week's
Headlines
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New Revelations in Obama IRS
Scandal
This week we revealed to the public more about the IRS’
historic abuse of power. We released 294 pages of FBI
documents showing that top IRS officials in Washington, including Lois Lerner
and Holly Paz, knew that the agency was specifically targeting “Tea Party” and
other conservative organizations two full years before disclosing it to Congress
and the public.
Lerner was director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit and
Paz was the IRS Acting Director of Rulings and Agreements.
These so-called “302” documents – detailed narratives of FBI
investigative interviews – fully confirm a report by the Treasury
Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in 2013 that said, “Senior IRS
officials knew that agents were targeting conservative groups for special
scrutiny as early as 2011.” Unsurprisingly, the Obama Justice Department and
FBI “investigation” into the Obama IRS scandal resulted in no criminal charges.
Lerner did not reveal the targeting until May
2013 in response to a planted question at an American Bar Association
conference. The new documents show that then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven
Miller actually wrote Lerner’s response that falsely blamed the scandal
on IRS low-level employees in Cincinnati: “They used names like Tea Party or
Patriots and they selected cases simply because the applications had those names
in the title. That was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and
inappropriate.”
The FBI documents also reveal that IRS officials stated that
the agency was targeting conservative groups in the summer of 2011 because of
their ideology and political affiliation. According to one senior tax law
specialist, “The case seemed to be pulled because of the applicant’s political
affiliation and screening is not supposed to occur that way … [Redacted] said he
thought the cases were being pulled based upon political affiliations.” And IRS
senior official Nancy Marks, appointed by Miller to conduct an internal
investigation stated, “Cincinnati was categorizing cases based on name and
ideology, not just activity.”
We obtained these documents through a federal court order in our
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial
Watch v Department of Justice (No. 1:14-cv-01239)).
According to the FBI documents, Paz and others were informed in
the late spring and summer of 2011 that Cincinnati agents were using “BOLO” (Be
On the Look Out) briefing guides that instructed them to be “looking at cases
using the Tea Party term.” The IRS failed to reveal such targeting until the ABA
conference in May 2013:
She read how the case was screened and it was not because of
the organization’s activity. The case seemed to be pulled because of the
applicant’s political affiliation and screening is not supposed to occur that
way. She wanted to alert the managers about the way the cases were being pulled
… [Redacted] said he thought the cases were being pulled based upon political
affiliations. [Redacted] then went to tell [Redacted] said he would follow up on
the issue and would let HOLLY PAZ know this was possibly occurring. This
occurred in the mid to late March or April 2011
timeframe.
***
The cases were labeled as Tea Party cases. The screening sheets
said the two cases were pulled because of the names and political
affiliations.
- The FBI reports that in its interview with an unidentified IRS Technical
Advisorwho reported directly to Lerner:
[Redacted] attended a meeting in the summer of 2011. She was
not invited, but she was talking to LERNER about something else in the office
when LERNER mentioned that it would be interesting for her to attend … Only
people from Washington, D.C. were in the room, to include HOLLY PAZ … At the
meeting, it was disclosed that one of the ways Cincinnati was looking for cases
was using the “Tea Party” term. They were calling the body of cases involving
political activity “Tea Party” cases. The concern was that the IRS had put a
label on the cases that would be problematic.
In his meeting concerning the briefing in mid-June [2011]
[Redacted] met with EOT and EOG [Exempt Organizations Group] staffs and PAZ….
They showed PAZ the briefing paper and the use of the Tea Party term. PAZ was
the highest-ranking person at the meeting. Somebody said they may not want to
use Tea Party as a labeling term. [Redacted] had recognized they may not want to
use the term Tea Party when they were doing the briefing paper, but his plan was
to raise the issue with PAZ at the briefing. He does not recall PAZ’s
reaction.
According to a ten-page section of
the documents containing FBI interviews with IRS Senior Technical Advisor Nancy
Marks, in the spring of 2012, Miller asked Marks to “look into how these 501
(c)(4) cases were being handled and find out what the problems were.” After
investigations in Washington and Cincinnati, Marks reported the following to
Miller in May 2012, according to the FBI:
It was not until much later that MARKS saw information that
[Redacted] was only looking for Tea Party cases…. The BOLO showed that at
various points the criteria called for “Tea Party” name, and then later the
ideology…. She told him [Miller, on May 3, 2012] that Cincinnati was
categorizing cases based on name and ideology, not just activity. When MARKS
told MILLER this, he threw his pencil across the room and said, “Oh
shit.”
The FBI documents also reveal that the FBI investigated why
Holly Paz sat in on numerous Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
(TIGTA) interviews with lower level IRS employees and if her presence improperly
influenced the employees’ responses to investigators’ questions. The documents
repeatedly state, “Other than the auditors, the only person present during the
[Redacted] interview was HOLLY PAZ.”
The documents contain two separate lengthy FBI interviews with
Lois Lerner, the first in June 2013 and the
second in October 2013. Both
interviews came after Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment constitutional right
against self-incrimination before the House Oversight Committee in May 2013. By
answering questions under oath in her FBI interviews, Lerner seemed to undermine
her earlier Fifth Amendment-based refusal to testify to Congress, since
witnesses generallycannot invoke the right in
one instance and not another. The House voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress
for her refusal to testify.
And the FBI 302 documents also contain an interview in which
Miller reveals that former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman very likely misled
Congress in his March 22, 2012, testimony before the
House Ways and Means Committee when he said, “There is absolutely no
targeting.” According to the FBI report on the Miller interview, “In February or
March, MILLER talked to SHULMAN about the development letters.” The “development
letters” were letters sent by the IRS primarily to targeted conservative groups
seeking what the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) later
termed “inappropriate” information about websites and donors.
These documents show that the Obama FBI and Justice Department
had plenty of evidence suggesting illegal targeting, perjury, and obstruction of
justice. Both the FBI and Justice Department collaborated with
the Lois Lerner and the IRS to try to prosecute and jail Barack Obama’s
political opponents. These documents show the resulting compromised
investigation looked the other way when it came to Obama’s IRS
criminality.
Stay tuned, as we will receive more IRS scandal documents next
week.
Hillary
Clinton Keeps Changing Her
Story
Last week I recounted to you our
arguments to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan explaining why we should be
permitted to depose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her
non-state.gov email system. Hillary Clinton, in a news interview, gave us and
the court more reasons for her testimony.
As I wrote in a column today for Fox News:
Lawyers for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, seeking
to avoid her deposition testimony, repeatedly informed U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet G. Sullivan that her use of the clintonemail.com system was nothing more
than a continuation of her standard “practice.”
Judicial Watch attorneys only seek to question Mrs. Clinton for
no more than three hours as part of a discovery process that already saw the
testimony of several witnesses, including her top State aides, Cheryl Mills and
Huma Abedin.
But her legal team claimed in a court hearing before Judge
Sullivan last week that questioning Secretary Clinton about her motivation for
the use of the system would not yield any additional information other than that
it was simply for her own “convenience.”
But it seems that Mrs. Clinton’s email claims change every time
she’s asked about the issue.
This week we went back to Judge
Sullivan after Clinton seemed to change her story about the email system housed
at her home in Chappaqua, NY. We cited a recent
interview with Scott Pelley, of CBS News “60 Minutes”:
PELLEY: All right. Do you think you blew it on the
e-mails?
CLINTON: Oh, I’ve said I did. Absolutely. I made a mistake. I
should have had two accounts; one for personal and one for office. And I didn’t,
and I take responsibility for that.
PELLEY: Why did you do that, have the private e-mail
servers?
CLINTON: You know, Scott, other people did have — other
secretaries of state, other high-ranking members of administrations, plural.
And it was recommended that it would be convenient, and I thought it would be.
It’s turned out to be anything but.
Our legal team explained to Judge Sullivan:
Based on her testimony to the Benghazi Select Committee, the
statement on her campaign website, and her purported answers to the FBI’s
questions, it is nowhere even suggested that Secretary Clinton’s decision to use
the clintonemail.com system for official government business was based on
someone else’s recommendation.
Because of the evolving explanation, Secretary Clinton’s
deposition is necessary to effectively and efficiently understand how the
decision was made and the motivation behind it.
Just a few hours ago, Hillary Clinton’s attorneys filed her response.
Incredibly, Hillary Clinton doesn’t dispute the revelation that someone else
recommended that the non-State.gov email would be convenient to Mrs. Clinton,
but only that we shouldn’t be able to satisfy our “curiosity” about the new
information! But as I also wrote today at Fox News:
If a State Department official, such as the executive secretary
or the legal advisor, recommended that Secretary Clinton use a non-state.gov
system for State Department business, such evidence could demonstrate the State
Department’s role in the decision.
Similarly, if someone who understood the secretary’s FOIA
obligations recommended Secretary Clinton’s use of the system, such evidence
could suggest that the motivation was more than just
convenience.
Hillary Clinton’s slippery and changing stories on her email
scandal show the value of taking a few hours to ask direct and follow
up questions about her email practices.
Obama’s Trip to Climate Conference Cost Taxpayers
$4,165,068.40
It takes a lot of taxpayer cash and jet exhaust to fly a
president to a “climate change” meeting in Paris.
We have obtained records from the U.S. Secret Service and
the Department of the Air
Force detailing the costs of Obama’s trip to attend the 2015 Paris Climate Change
Conference. Secret Service charges for Obama and his staff to attend the
Conference cost taxpayers $1,324,171.60. Flight expenses cost $2,840,896.80,
bringing the total expenditure for the conference to at least $4,165,068.40. To
date, Obama’s known travel expenses total $83,795,502.33.
Barack Obama’s appointees didn’t volunteer this information. We
filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for these documents on January
6, 2016. Our request wasn’t answered, so we had to sue this past May (Judicial Watch v. U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:16-cv-00863)). Only then did we
get the documents.
Here are the Secret Service expenses for Obama’s ideological
Paris junket:
- $82,991.60 for air and rail travel.
- $706,065 for Parisian hotels.
- $531,598 for rental vehicles.
- $10,820 in overtime pay.
- Cell phone rentals were $2,562.
- Cell phone usage cost of $679.
- A copier rental for $652.
- $624 in “miscellaneous” expenses.
The Secret Service detail stayed in a number of Parisian
hotels. The most money was spent at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand, a
historic hotel built in 1862 that is called a “luxury” hotel that “defines
historic grandeur,” according to its website.
Accommodations were also booked at the Hilton Astor, Marriott Ambassador,
Marriott Rive Gauche, and Mercure Tour Eiffel.
According to Air Force documents, at least two planes were used
for the trip to Paris, Air Force One and a C-32A (which is generally used by
either the secretary of state or the first lady):
- Air Force One travelled a total of 14.4 hours @ $180,118 per
hour for a total of $2,593,699.20.
- The C-32A travelled 15.6 hours @ $15,846 per hour for a total
of $247,197.60.
Other expenses for additional cabinet
members’ travel and catering, Secret Service meals, meeting rooms, etc. are
not included in these totals.
The controversial Paris Climate Conference, also known as
COP21, lasted from November 30, 2015, to December 12, 2015. Travel to the
conferencereportedly burned
300,000 tons of carbon dioxide, seemingly defeating the purpose of the meeting
of world leaders. Critics also contend
President Obama’s executive action implementing the Paris Climate Agreement
circumvents the constitutional requirement that treaties become law only after
ratification by the U.S. Senate.
This junket is another example of wasteful and unnecessary
presidential travel that abuses the taxpayers, the military, and the U.S. Secret
Service. It’s pure folly and we should demand that the next president (and
Congress) put an end to it
Heroic Judicial Watch Client Sues against Federal
Agents Violation of Constitutional
Rights
We have gone to court on behalf of Wesley Dutton, a heroic
former law enforcement officer who has provided the government with substantial
information on narcotics, corruption and terrorism along the Mexican
border.
Since 2009, Plaintiff Wesley Dutton, a graduate of the New
Mexico State Police Academy and former State of New Mexico livestock
investigator, provided information to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
about illegal activity in Texas and New Mexico, including information about
illegal narcotics trafficking, fugitives, public corruption, and
terrorism.
Our lawsuit, William Wesley
Dutton v. Michael Cordero, Eric Benn and Jane Doe No.1 (Case
2:16-cv-00517-CG-GJF), was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of
New Mexico. It seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, attorney fees
and costs, and other relief.
Defendant Cordero is a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). Defendant Benn is a Special Agent of the U.S. Department
of Justice’s Office of Inspector General. Defendant Jane Doe No. 1 is believed
to be a Special Agent of the FBI.
The reason for our lawsuit: In February 2014 Special Agents
Cordero, Benn, and Jane Doe No. 1 detained Dutton in the back seat of a locked
government vehicle and interrogated him for approximately eight hours. The
agents never advised Dutton that they had a warrant for his arrest, that he was
under arrest, or that he was suspected of committing any crime.
Dutton objected to the detention and repeatedly asked if he
was under arrest. His objections and inquiries were ignored. Dutton also invoked
his right to counsel. In response to one such request, Special Agent Cordero
cursed at Dutton and exclaimed, “You’re not talking to anyone.” Special Agent
Benn echoed Cordero’s response to Dutton. Cordero and Benn’s denial of Dutton’s
rights, as well as their interrogation of Dutton were laden with profanity and
abusive language. The agents also compelled Dutton to make telephone calls to
sources and monitored and recorded the calls.
Defendant Jane Doe No. 1 is believed to be an FBI special
agent unlawfully posing as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and falsely offering
“immunity” to Dutton for his cooperation.
At the end of the interrogation, Jane Doe No. 1 said to
Special Agent Cordero, “You can’t arrest him. We’ve got to let him go.” Special
Agent Benn agreed, saying, “You can’t arrest him. I’m satisfied.” Cordero
cursed. Ultimately, Dutton was allowed to leave the vehicle, but both Cordero
and Benn told Dutton to “keep his mouth shut.” Before the agents drove off,
Cordero cursed at Dutton yet again, saying he hoped he never saw Dutton
again.
On at least two prior interactions, FBI agents came to
Dutton’s home and violated his constitutional rights. In July 2010, FBI agents
searched Dutton’s home without a warrant and seized documents, computers, and
electronic equipment. In August 2012, Cordero and other, unidentified FBI agents
searched Dutton’s home again, also without a warrant, and seized Dutton’s
personal property, papers, notebooks, charts, computers, and cell phone.
Dutton’s items have never been returned to him.
We grant the federal government significant power, and its
agents seem all too willing to abuse it, whether in the halls of the IRS in
Washington or a locked vehicle on a dusty stretch near the Mexican
border.
Wes Dutton is a hero. He’s a former law enforcement officer,
and he has a long history of helping law enforcement and intelligence agencies
lock up criminals and defend the country from terrorists. It’s shameful that
federal agents would abuse their authority and treat him in such a manner. We’re
proud to assist Wes in exposing corruption and abuse and remedying this gross
violation of his constitutional rights.
Until next week...
 Tom FittonPresident
**Please do not
reprint without
permission.**
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