Tag Archives: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Finding The Common Ground

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On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article about a common factor among some  of the people attempting to remove President Trump’s name from the presidential primary ballot.

The article reports:

Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows claims to be unbiased when she ruled that Trump is disqualified from running in the state’s 2024 presidential race. But Bellows, the Democrat whose Dec. 28 ruling booted Trump off the Republican primary ballot in the northeasternmost U.S. state, previously cashed in on Soros family money.

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, during her doomed U.S. Senate bid against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in 2014, Bellows received a $2,600 donation from Andrea Soros, the daughter of billionaire investor George Soros, who notoriously spends his wealth influencing local elections across America by bankrolling the campaigns of Democrat picks.

The article notes:

Maine was the second state to officially declare Trump ineligible. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court decided on Dec. 19 to enforce Trump’s disqualification. Leading the charge in the Colorado case to ensure Trump’s removal is the Orwellian-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Between FY 2017 and 2021, CREW was given more than $2.8 million in grants by the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which acts as one of Soros’s two chief grantmaking vehicles, for “general support” and “support[ing] political advocacy on ethics in government,” according to an Open Society Foundations database.

And another one…

Spurred by Colorado’s decision, California’s Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis followed suit, requesting in a Dec. 20 letter that the state’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber “explore every legal option” to remove Trump from the presidential primary ballot there.

Kounalakis, too, is a Soros recipient. According to campaign finance records, Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton Soros, another Open Society Foundations board member, handed over a total of $45,400 to bolster Kounalakis’ successful 2018 campaign and 2022 re-election. Now, Kounalakis is gunning for the California governorship in 2026. Last year, Soros gave Kounalakis an additional $36,400, the maximum amount allowed, just a few months after she launched her bid to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

And in conclusion…

Free Speech for the People is the 501(c)(3)organization that filed a flurry of lawsuits across multiple states to bar Trump from the ballot by claiming that he violated the 14th Amendment’s little-used “insurrection” clause (Section 3). Dubbed the nationwide “14Point3 Campaign” in reference to the constitutional provision, the left-of-center nonprofit advanced 14th Amendment challenges in Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and Illinois as well as organized the most recent Massachusetts complaint.

…In the past, Free Speech for the People was partly funded through grants awarded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which has received $1.5 million in funding from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a primary Soros grantmaker. Between 2013 and 2017, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave Free Speech for the People $275,000 in grants, according to archived 990-PF forms.

See a pattern yet?

 

Unfortunately Justice In America Is Not Blind

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The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article (updated today) about a appeal by the Biden administration’s justice department to prevent a memo about the Russian collusion charges against President Trump from being released.

The article reports:

The Biden administration said Monday that it would appeal a judge’s order directing it to release a memo explaining why Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t choose to prosecute President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice by allegedly thwarting Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. 

But it also agreed to make a brief portion of the document public, which shows that two senior Justice Department leaders advised Barr that, in their view, Mueller’s evidence could not support an obstruction conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt. 

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson earlier this month ordered Biden’s DOJ to release the entire March 2019 memo as part of a public records lawsuit from a Washington-based advocacy organization. 

She said the department, under Attorney General William Barr, had misstated the purpose of the document in arguing that it was legally entitled to withhold it from the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

In a motion filed late Monday, the deadline for deciding whether it would comply with the judge’s decision or appeal it, the Justice Department said that it continued to believe even that the full document should be exempt from disclosure.

It appears Biden’s DOJ took the decision to avoid setting a new precedent where more sensitive internal documents would have to be released, Politico reported. 

Presidents and administrations of both parties have constantly fought to keep these documents secret. 

The article concludes:

The department said the decision before the attorney general was not whether to prosecute Trump since the indictment of a sitting president is precluded by longstanding Justice Department policy. Rather, the question that the memo set out to address was whether the facts gathered by Mueller could warrant a criminal case. That question, the government says, was a genuine decision that had to be made.

‘The Attorney General´s determination on that point – and on what, if anything, to say to the public about that question – undoubtedly qualifies as a decision, even if it could not have resulted in an actual prosecution of the sitting President,’ Justice Department lawyers wrote.

‘There was no legal bar to determining that the evidence did or did not establish commission of a crime, a determination the Attorney General made and announced,’ they added.

In a letter to AG Merrick Garland on May 14, Senate Democrats urged him not to appeal the court’s order to ‘help rebuild the nation’s trust in independence after four years of turmoil’.

The group of Senators lead by Majority Whip Dick Durbin wrote: ‘DOJ’s actions in this case, and in another recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case seeking information about President Trump’s activities, have raised doubts about DOJ’s candor when characterizing potential evidence of President Trump’s misconduct to courts. 

‘To be clear, these misrepresentations preceded your confirmation as Attorney General, but the Department you now lead bears responsibility for redressing them.

‘In that light, and in order to help rebuild the nation’s trust in DOJ’s independence after four years of turmoil, we urge DOJ not to appeal D.C. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s May 3 decision to order the release of this OLC memo.’

One of the true successes of the Trump administration was to expose the corruption that runs rampant in Washington. It is not surprising that the cadre of people who fought so hard to keep President Trump from exposing that corruption are still fighting to keep their actions hidden. I agree with a friend who posted on Facebook that Washington is not a swamp–it’s a sewer–a swamp has some ecological value!

The Investigation Continues

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Judicial Watch has been instrumental in uncovering the misdeeds of the intelligence and Department of Justice communities during the Obama administration. They are quietly deposing many of the people involved as the result of a ruling by a district court that allows them to question many of the people involved in the Clinton email scandal.

In a Press Release today, Judicial Watch reported:

Judicial Watch: Justice Department Granted Immunity To Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer Who Destroyed 33,000 Emails

Heather Samuelson also testifies under oath in Judicial Watch court-ordered deposition that, 

contrary to what she told the FBI, she was in fact aware that 

Clinton used private email account as secretary of state

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s White House Liaison at the State Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, Heather Samuelson, admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the U.S. Department of Justice in June 2016:

Samuelson: I was provided limited production immunity by the Department of Justice.

Judicial Watch: And when was that?

***

Samuelson: My recollection, it was June 2015 [later corrected to 2016].

A complete copy of her deposition transcript is available here. Samuelson also revealed that, contrary to what she told the FBI in 2016, she was, in fact, aware that Sec. Clinton used a private email account while secretary of state:

Judicial Watch: Ms. Samuelson, when did you first become aware that Secretary Clinton used the e-mail address hdr22@clintonemail.com while she was at the State Department?

Samuelson: I believe I first became aware when either she e-mailed me on personal matters, such as wishing me happy birthday, or when I infrequently would receive e-mails forwarded to me from others at the department that had that e-mail address listed elsewhere in the document.

***

Judicial Watch: Okay. And who were the State Department officials?

Samuelson: I recall Cheryl Mills, but it could have been others.

Samuel’s admission to Judicial Watch that she became aware of Clinton’s non-State.gov emails during her service in the Clinton State Department White House Liaison Office during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state (January 2009 – February 2013) contradicts the notation in the FBI’s May 24, 2016 302 report on Samuelson’s interview with FBI agents:

Samuelson did not become aware of Clinton’s use of a private email account and server until she was serving as Clinton’s personal attorney.

After Clinton left office, Samuelson worked for a year in the office of the White House Counsel before becoming Clinton’s personal attorney, where, in 2014, she was primarily responsible for conducting the review of Clinton emails and sorting out “personal” emails from government emails, which were returned to the State Department under the direction of Cheryl Mills and Clinton lawyer David Kendall.  After the emails were returned to State, Clinton deleted the rest of the “personal” emails from her server, wiping it clean. Samuelson conducted the review of emails on her laptop, using Clinton server files downloaded from Platte River Networks, which housed the Clinton email server. Judicial Watch questioned her about a “gap” in the emails she discovered:

Judicial Watch: I believe you, during your interview with the FBI, you were asked about a gap in e-mails that you noticed in Secretary Clinton’s e-mails from January 2009 to March of 2009. Do you recall that?

Samuelson: I do.

Judicial Watch: Okay. Can you explain to me what that gap was?

Samuelson: My understanding is — well, I’m sorry. I should say my recollection is when we received the documents — the file from Platte River Networks, there was a period of time that was missing in her e-mails. And that period of time was January 2009 to March 2009.

Judicial Watch: And what did you do as the result of discovering this gap in the e-mails from January 2009 to March 2009?

***

Samuelson: I asked Platte River why we did not have — why they did not provide those.

Judicial Watch: And what did they tell you?

Samuelson: They said they did not have that information.

Judicial Watch: Did Platte River have access during 2014 to the server that housed Secretary Clinton’s e-mails to her Clintonemail.com account –

***

– and was there any discussion as to whether they could obtain Secretary Clinton’s e-mails from that server from January 2009 to March 2009?

***

Samuelson: I did ask them, and they said they did not have any e-mails from that period.

Samuelson also testified in her deposition that she created an “after action memo” in or around December 2014 to memorialize the email search. Samuelson’s lawyer directed her not to answer questions about this memo.

During Hillary Clinton’s transition as secretary of state during her tenure, Samuelson was in charge of political-nomination (“Schedule C”) hires for Clinton’s transition team at the State Department.  When questioned by Judicial Watch lawyers about Brock Johnson, whom she hired as a special assistant to Secretary Clinton as a “favor” to controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band (co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative), Samuelson testified that on occasion Band sent referrals of individuals they should consider hiring. Johnson later worked, in coordination with the Obama White House, when the State Department falsely responded to a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) FOIA request that there were no records showing Clinton’s email address.

The deposition of Samuelson comes out of Judicial Watch’s July 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the U.S. Department of State failed to respond to a May 13, 2014 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Judicial Watch seeks:

    • Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
    • Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

On December 6, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers and Clinton aides, as well as Heather Samuelson, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” Judicial Watch’s discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing Judicial Watch’s FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office.

“The news that the Obama DOJ gave immunity to Heather Samuelson, Hillary Clinton’s lawyer responsible for the infamous deletion of 33,000 emails, further confirms the sham FBI/DOJ investigation of the Clinton email scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “And it is curious that Ms. Samuelson changed her story about what she knew and when about the Clinton email system.  Attorney General Barr can’t reopen the Clinton email investigation fast enough.”

Judicial Watch seems to be the only organization that cares about corruption in our government.

Avoiding Transparency

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As I have previously written, Judicial Watch has done an amazing job of keeping our government transparent, regardless of which party is in power. Recently, Judicial Watch uncovered records that the State Department (during the Obama administration) had told them did not exist. The documents uncovered reveal that the Obama administration was tracting FOIA requests. The question is whether or not Secretary of State Clinton was attemptig to evade FOIA by using her private server.

Yesterday Judicial Watch issued the following Press Release:

‘WH called – have we received a FOIA request’ – State Department 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained 44 pages of records from the State Department through court-ordered discovery revealing that the Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records concerning then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system. Months after the Obama White House involvement, the State Department responded to the requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed.

Judicial Watch’s discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing Judicial Watch’s FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office. U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as E.W. Priestap, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a report in January 2016 saying “At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business.” Also, the IG “found evidence that [Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills] was informed of the request at the time it was received …”

The State Department produced records in response to court-ordered document requests that detail Obama White House involvement in the Clinton email FOIA request.

In a December 20, 2012, email with the subject line “Need to track down a FOIA request from CREW”, Sheryl L. Walter, director of the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services (A/GIS/IPS), writes to IPS officials Rosemary D. Reid and Patrick D. Scholl and their assistants:

WH called – have we received a FOIA request from CREW (Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington) on the topic of personal use of email by senior officials? Apparently other agencies have. If we have it, can you give me the details so I can call the WH back? I think they’d like it on quick turnaround. Thanks! Sheryl

In the same email chain, Walter on December 20, 2012 also emailed Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s White House liaison, describing the CREW FOIA request:

Hi Heather – Copy attached, it was in our significant weekly FOIA report that we send to L and S/ES also. Do you want us to add you to that list? It’s a subset of things like this that we think likely to be of broader Department interest. More detail below re this request. As a practical matter given our workload, it won’t be processed for some months. Let me know if there are any particular sensitivities. If we don’t talk later, happy holidays! All the best, Sheryl

Sheryl: The request is assigned Case #F-2012-40981. It was received on 12/6/2012 and acknowledged on 12/10/2012. The request is assigned for processing.

On January 10, 2013, Walter writes to Samuelson that she is not including “personal” accounts in the FOIA request search:

Hi Heather – did you ever get any intell re what other agencies are doing re this FOIA request that seeks records about the number of email accounts associated with the Secretary (but isn’t specifying “personal” email accounts so we are interpreting as official accounts only). We are considering contacting the requester to find out exactly what it is they are looking for. Do you have any-concerns about that approach?

Soon afterward, Samuelson responds, “White House Counsel was looking into this for me. I will circle back with them now to see if they have further guidance.”

CREW’s general counsel, Anne Weismann, submitted a FOIA request to the State Department on December 6, 2012, seeking “records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton.”

On May 10, 2013, [Information Programs and Services] replied to CREW, stating that “no records responsive to your request were located.”

Samuelson became Secretary Clinton’s personal lawyer and in 2014 led the review of Clinton’s emails to determine which ones were work-related and which were personal. She was also one of five close Clinton associates granted immunity by the Department of Justice in the Clinton email investigation.

Samuelson is one of several Obama administration and State Department officials ordered by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth to respond under oath to Judicial Watch questions regarding whether Clinton’s private email use while Secretary of State was an intentional attempt to evade FOIA.

The new documents also include a January 2013 email exchange discussing Clinton’s departure from the State Department in which Agency Records Officer Tasha M. Thian specifically stating that Secretary Clinton “does not use email.”

This was directly contradicted by an email exchange between Secretary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus dating back to January 2009 – the very first days of Clinton’s State Department tenure – in which she tells Petraeus that she “had to change her email address.”

Interestingly, this email exchange between Petraeus and Clinton was not produced in a related FOIA lawsuit seeking “all emails” of Hillary Clinton. The bottom portion of the email chain was produced, but not the beginning emails.

In a January 2013 email under the subject “RE: Sec Clinton’s papers,” Thian writes:

Just so you know, Secretary Clinton – she brought with her a lot of material as Senator and First Lady – 47 boxes. In case you hear there are many boxes I wanted you to know what they are. She is taking her copies of photos, public speeches, press statements, contacts, templates (some of these are both hard copy and electronic), reimbursements, etc …

Although Sec. Clinton does not use email [emphasis added] her staffers do – I have agreed that the emails of the three staffers will be electronically captured (and not printed out).

Also included in the new batch of documents is the draft Departing Officials Notice, which states that State Department personnel are not to remove classified records from Department “custody and control.”

The new records obtained by Judicial Watch are further evidence revealing the Obama White House’s early knowledge of questions surrounding Clinton’s email use. In late April, Judicial Watch announced that E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, had admitted, in writing and under oath, that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President.

“These documents suggest the Obama White House knew about the Clinton email lies being told to the public at least as early as December 2012,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “A federal court granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton emails because the court wanted answers about a government cover-up of the Clinton emails. And now we have answers because it looks like the Obama White House orchestrated the Clinton email cover-up.”

Judicial Watch’s filed its 2014 FOIA lawsuit after the State Department failed to respond to a May 13, 2014 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)).

Real news is out there, you just have to look for it. Sometimes you simply have to go after it using the legal process.

This Is A Really Sad Story

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Alumnus John Murtha served in the United State...

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Anyone who is a parent has probably tried to instill in their children a sense of honesty, fairness, and some amount of trust in authority. Many of our colleges try to erase those qualities. One of my daughters took a college course where the underlying message in the course was, “If your ancestors arrived in America early, they took over the country and made all the laws to benefit themselves.” I was fortunate in that the daughter involved did not buy into that message. However, sometimes things happen which cause me to worry if that is closer to the truth today than I care to admit.

Roll Call reported yesterday that according to newly released FBI documents, Representative John Murtha was involved in funneling money to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers.

The article reports:

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Justice Department files on Murtha and other Members of Congress. Its requests have been denied for the living Members on the grounds that they have a right to privacy, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said last week. Murtha’s death eliminated the privacy exemption, and the Justice Department handed over a heavily redacted bunch of files to CREW on Oct. 14.

I understand the right to privacy, but where there is criminal activity involved, shouldn’t exposure of that criminal activity trump the privacy right?

The article at Roll Call lists a number of questionable transactions that Representative Murtha was involved in. The article then concludes:

The FBI investigation also suggested that a staff member in Murtha’s office may have failed to disclose thousands of dollars in income and assets on her annual financial disclosure forms; that money from Murtha’s campaign fund may have been used to buy guns for the personal use of another Murtha staffer; that Murtha may have steered contracts and earmarks to other family members; that staff members may have violated the one-year ban on lobbying Murtha’s office after leaving his employ; and that KSA may have run a fraudulent political action committee.

There is no evidence in the released documents that the FBI pursed any of these cases.

Sloan of CREW said the FBI files prove a long-sought point: “It was as bad as we said it was. It wasn’t nothing; it wasn’t OK.”

A thorough investigation of John Murtha while he was alive could have saved taxpayers some serious money. This is the kind of spending cuts we need to begin with. It is sad that the FBI allowed these activities to continue without thoroughly investigating them, and it is a shame that John Murtha had so little respect for the office of Representative and the people he was supposed to represent that he engaged in this sort of behavior.

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