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| October 28, 2016: This Week's
Headlines
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Clinton State Department IT Official John Bentel
Takes the
Fifth
The
bureaucrats Hillary Clinton worked with at State still are withholding what they
know about her illicit email practices.
You can see that in the deposition
transcript of John Bentel, the State Department’s former Director of
Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat, who was ordered by
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to respond to our questions. We
released the transcript this week.
Mr. Bentel, whose office handles information technology for the
Office of the Secretary, answered 87 questions with: “On advice from my legal
counsel, I decline to answer the question and I invoke my Fifth Amendment
rights.”
We had the same experience with IT political appointee Bryan Pagliano, the
Clinton State Department IT official who reportedly provided support for the
Clinton email system.
Bentel asserted his Fifth Amendment right in answer to many key
questions about issues raised directly by Judge Sullivan. On August 19, 2016, Judge
Sullivan granted Judicial Watch’s request to depose Bentel, citing significant
discrepancies in Bentel’s previous statements on the Clinton non-state.gov
email system:
The Court is persuaded that Mr. Bentel should be deposed
because the record in this case appears to contradict his sworn testimony before
the [House Select] Benghazi Committee . . .. Specifically, Mr. Bentel testified
that he was not aware that Secretary Clinton’s email account was housed on a
private server until media reports in 2015 . . .. However, several emails
indicate Mr. Bentel knew about the private server as early as
2009.
Bentel asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in response to all
questions about what he knew about Hillary Clinton’s email system and its impact
on the Freedom of Information Act.
In ordering Bentel’s deposition, Judge Sullivan also cited a
May 2016 Inspector General’s
report that found that Mr. Bentel told employees in his office that
Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement had been approved by the State
Department’s legal staff and also instructed his subordinates not to discuss the
Secretary’s email again:
In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that
information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain
Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal
recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated
that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by
Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further .
. . . According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the
server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the
Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal
email system again.
Bentel asserted his Fifth Amendment right when asked about this
reference to the State Department Inspector General’s report and about his FBI
interview.
Mr. Bentel, on advice of the Obama Justice Department and
personal counsel, refused to answer any questions about whether Hillary Clinton
was paying his legal fees or offered him employment or other financial
incentives. Pagliano also declined to say who was paying for his legal
representation.
We previously deposed seven former Clinton top aides and
current State Department officials, including top Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin. We also
deposed IT official Bryan Pagliano, who asserted his Fifth Amendment right not
to testify during the Judicial Watch
deposition. And Clinton last week answered our questions under
oath regarding her non-government email system.
The depositions come in connection with a Judicial Watch
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that seeks
records about the corrupt patronage job given to Clinton confidante Huma Abedin,
who served as deputy chief of staff to former Secretary Clinton (Judicial Watch
v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).
The fact that yet another State Department official took the
Fifth highlights the disturbing implication that criminal acts took place
related to the Clinton email system and our FOIA requests.
U.S.
Spends Millions on “Green Bus Corridor” in Mexico, “Bicycle Highway” in
Colombia
A recent survey revealed that
Americans most fear government corruption and that the climate doesn’t even make
the Top Ten list of worries.
Our Corruption Chronicles blog illustrates why
Americans should worry about climate change – because of the government
corruption involved in supposedly combatting it:
Surprise, surprise: The U.S. is the first to donate millions of
dollars to yet another global warming experiment—run by the famously corrupt
United Nations—that aims to forge “climate resilient infrastructure” in
third-world countries.
The money will help build a bicycle highway in Colombia and
bring electric buses and a “green bus corridor” to Mexico, issues that are
unlikely to keep most American taxpayers up at night.
It’s part of an initiative called C40 Cities Finance Facility,
launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris last year. The global
warming powwow in France has already cost American taxpayers a chunk of change,
and Judicial Watch made the numbers public over the summer after obtaining records from the U.S.
Secret Service and the Department of the Air Force.
The documents offer a detailed breakdown of the cost, but the
total expenditure to have President Obama attend the ludicrous Paris shindig was
an eye-popping $4,165,068. Judicial Watch had to file a lawsuit to get the
information because the administration refused to provide it under the federal
public-records law that was enacted to keep government in check.
During the Paris conference, the C40 Cities Finance Facility
was launched to provide much-needed cash for a 10-year-old program called C40 that claims to be
a “network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change.”
The conglomerate specializes in tackling climate change in developing countries
by driving urban action that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and climate
risks.
Evidently, it’s come up with some brilliant ideas in the last
decade to accomplish its mission but not enough money to implement them. As is
the case in many of these global, feel-good initiatives, Uncle Sam has
generously opened his checkbook for this important cause. Germany is the other
“funding partner” listed along with the U.S.
The first $2 million, doled out this month by the U.S., will
fund two urban pilot projects in Latin America that are expected to bring
“climate change adaptation and mitigation benefits.” The first project is a
25-kilometer bicycle highway in Bogota, Colombia, that will connect citizens
from low, middle and high-income neighborhoods to work, education, and
recreation opportunities.
An announcement
published by the U.S. government calls the project a “first-of-its-kind”
traversing the Colombian city from south to north. The rest of the money will
buy a fleet of at least 100 electric buses for Mexico City and install a “green
bus corridor” in one of its major thoroughfares. It’s expected to serve an
estimated 133,400 Mexicans daily, providing connections to metro lines. This is
an important investment for the U.S., a government official says in the
announcement, because the impacts of climate change are impeding cities from
delivering reliable services, “especially to the poorest.”
Years ago, the Obama administration determined that the poor
will feel the brunt of climate change and it has cost American taxpayers
monstrous sums. In the last few years the U.S. government has funded a number of
programs, both domestic and international, to prepare those communities for the
impact.
Back in 2012 the administration asked Congress for a
whopping $770 million to help
developing countries with climate change initiatives after it had already spent
$323 million on a project called Global Climate Change
Initiative that helps “meet the adaptation and mitigation needs of
developing countries, including deploying clean energy technologies.”
Earlier this year, a federal audit revealed that a $25 million project to
help Guatemala combat the ills of climate change is rife with problems that
include data errors and discrepancies. The program is officially known as
Climate Nature and Communities in Guatemala (CNCG).
Ideology wrapped in dubious science = taxpayer boondoggle. Is
it any wonder that people are tired of corrupt politicians?
Judicial Watch Will Monitor Virginia Polls on
Election
Day
As part of
our ongoing Election Integrity Project, we plan to have Judicial Watch volunteer
poll observers will monitor polling sites in Virginia on Election Day. We have
significant concerns about the integrity of the election process
there:
- 1,046 aliens, or
residents who are not U.S. citizens, were on the voter rolls in 8 Virginia
counties. If that rate of non-citizen registration held in the rest of
Virginia’s counties, that would mean that about 6,500 non-citizens are
registered to vote in Virginia.
- A September 2016report by the Public
Interest Legal Foundation and the Virginia Voter’s Alliance shows: “In the 8
jurisdictions that provided us with lists of aliens recently removed from their
voter rolls, we discovered that 31 non-citizens had cast a total of 186 votes
between 2005 and 2015. The most alien votes were cast in 2012 followed by 2008,
the year President Obama was elected to his first term.” There are 133 total
Virginia voting jurisdictions, so the number in this report represents a mere
fraction of the true total of illegal votes.
- 19 deceasedindividuals
recently re-registered to vote in Virginia.
- In 2013, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program
(Crosscheck), which
provides a lists of voters who are registered in more than one of the 26 states
participating in the program, revealed that57,923 Virginia voters
were registered to vote in at least one other state. Of course this number would
be much higher if the Crosscheck program included every state – including New
York, California, and Texas, the most populous states in the
country.
Our Election Integrity Project leader, Robert Popper, will
train Virginia’s poll watchers. Bob is a former deputy chief of the Voting
Section in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and a veteran
poll observer for the Department of Justice.
The Election Integrity project began in February 2012. Since
that time Judicial Watch has put several state and county officials on notice
when they are in violation of federal laws requiring them to clean up their
voter rolls.
We also took action in lawsuits defending photo ID and other
commonsense election integrity measures. And there are also our historic and
successful lawsuits in states like Ohio and Indiana that resulted
in cleaner voter rolls and have achieved victories in the United States Supreme
Court to stop race-based elections in Hawaii.
Our team also fought in court against the Left (i.e. the Obama
administration) that wants to make it easier for non-citizens to register to
vote, and harder to remove them once they are illegally registered. And Judicial
Watch has conducted election monitoring before, for example in New Hampshire in
2014.
“Judicial Watch election monitors will be neutral and silent
observers at select polling places in Virginia,” Popper noted. “We do not oppose
or endorse candidates for public office. Our election monitoring in Virginia is
wholly independent of any party or candidate.”
Recent polls show that voters are becoming “deeply skeptical ”
about election integrity. One poll found that 98 percent of people believe that
voter fraud occurs: 74 percent believed that “some” or a “great deal” of voter fraud is going
on, and 24 percent said hardly any. A poll in The Washington
Post found that: “60% of Republicans believe illegal immigrants vote;
43% believe people vote using dead people’s names.”
Virginia residents interested in monitoring a local polling
site on Election Day may respond by email to Eric Lee at elee@judicialwatch.org.
The integrity of our government begins with our ability to
trust what happens in the voting booth. Incidents of voting fraud now flaring up
around the country are an indication that our concern is not
misplaced.
Special Report: Clinton’s Pay to Play
Scheme
Let me
encourage you to watch the “One America News Network Special Report: Clinton’s
Pay-to-Play Scheme.”
This well-crafted report reveals how the Clintons went from
being “broke” to being worth hundreds of millions. In it, you will hear the
experts, including representatives from Judicial Watch, disclose how the Clinton
Foundation traded government access in exchange for donations. You also will see
the evidence of an FBI “cover-up” of the Hillary Clinton email
investigation.
You can watch it here. It is worth your
time.
Until next week...
 Tom FittonPresident
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