Right in the middle of the Super Tuesday hysteria and the pandemic panic, this probably wasn’t the headline we were expecting. But it’s clearly the headline we deserve.
Judicial Watch has been pursuing hidden information about Hillary Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State at the time of the Benghazi attacks (among other things) for years. It’s largely a tireless and thankless battle most of the time. But like a dog that just won’t give up that bone, they’ve kept after it. And now a federal court has ordered that Clinton’s emails be released and that she be deposed in order for the case to proceed.
Judicial Watch today announced that U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted Judicial Watch’s request to depose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her emails and Benghazi attack documents. The court also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills and two other State Department officials.
Additionally, the court granted Judicial Watch’s request to subpoena Google for relevant documents and records associated with Clinton’s emails during her tenure at the State Department.
The ruling comes in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit that seeks records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack”
Judicial Watch is seeking to expose all of the relevant information surrounding the bizarre statements made by Susan Rice and answers given by the State Department regarding how and why the Benghazi embassy attacks took place. Most interesting here is the question as to whether or not Clinton’s private email server was set up to thwart FOIA requests and cover up the details. (Or at least if that was one of the reasons she set it up.)
Rather than leaning toward transparency, Clinton’s team has been fighting efforts during discovery tooth and claw. But where the requests have been granted, new and interesting information has emerged. Now the judge appears to be throwing open the doors due to not buying Clinton’s excuses for denying access. The court wrote, “Discovery up until this point has brought to light a noteworthy amount of relevant information, but Judicial Watch requests an additional round of discovery, and understandably so. With each passing round of discovery, the Court is left with more questions than answers.”
The strange part of this process (at least to me) is that we’re not even arguing about what actually happened at Benghazi. The fundamental dispute is over whether the State Department honored the law and truthfully responded to FOIA requests in goodwill as required by law and provided all of the applicable documents. They say yes. Judicial Watch isn’t buying it. And from the sound of the full order, the court isn’t either, at least not without additional transparency and better records.
Will all of this eventually lead to some new revelations about what went down in Benghazi? Perhaps even more to the point, will we learn that Hillary Clinton was hiding a lot more than just that by establishing a private email server in the first place? One can only imagine how much might have been lost forever if one of Clinton’s aides hadn’t allowed a ton of data to mysteriously show up on the laptop of Carlos Danger.
