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Judicial Watch...Group's Tactic on Hillary Clinton: Sue Her Again and Again

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Floridatexan

Floridatexan


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/judicial-watch-hillary-clinton.html?_r=1

"In between her extensive debate prep and her final, frenzied bid to raise money and win over voters, Hillary Clinton has had to carve out time to answer 25 detailed questions about her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

The questions came not from the F.B.I., which has closed its investigation into the issue, or from Congress, or even from a news outlet. They came from a nonprofit organization called Judicial Watch.

If the 2016 election has brought forward a new generation of Clinton antagonists — WikiLeaks, Breitbart, Russia — it has also reintroduced America to an old one.

Judicial Watch was one of the Clintons’ original tormentors, a charter member of what Mrs. Clinton famously called a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to destroy her and her husband by seizing on any potential scandal.

The organization filed its first lawsuit against the Clintons shortly after its formation in 1994, and it pretty much never stopped. It is currently the plaintiff in more than 20 suits involving Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“People always used to say to me, ‘What are you going to do when the Clintons leave?’” Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, said in an interview. “Well, the Clintons never really left.”

Neither has Judicial Watch, the indefatigable Clinton adversary that has probably done more than any other individual or organization to create the narrative that Mrs. Clinton is still battling: that she is untrustworthy.

It is a narrative that her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, has tried to exploit at every turn, whether he was labeling her “Crooked Hillary,” saying there was something “very fishy” about the suicide of her former law partner, Vincent W. Foster Jr., or suggesting that she might be concealing serious health problems.

Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. A vast majority are dismissed. But Judicial Watch caught a break last year, when revelations about Mrs. Clinton’s private email server prompted two judges to reopen two of the group’s cases connected to her tenure as secretary of state.

The lawsuits have since led to the release of hundreds of Mrs. Clinton’s emails — which have, in turn, spurred dozens of news releases and fund-raising letters from Judicial Watch that hype the significance of these documents, while putting them in the least flattering light possible for Mrs. Clinton.

The group’s lawyers were given permission to depose several of her senior aides from her time at the State Department. What is more, Mrs. Clinton herself will have to answer 25 detailed questions about her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

The questions, some with multiple parts, ask her to explain her rationale for using the private server and her reaction to warnings about the potential for security breaches, among other things. Her answers, to be provided via written testimony to the court, are due by Thursday.

Just getting this far has represented a victory for Judicial Watch, which operates out of a nondescript office building in the shadow of the Capitol.

Suing the government, repeatedly, is an expensive proposition; Judicial Watch has an annual budget of about $35 million that pays for close to 50 employees — a mix of lawyers, investigators and fund-raisers. Mr. Fitton says the group receives donations from nearly 400,000 individuals and institutions every year. One of its biggest funders, according to public filings, is the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which was created by the banking heir Richard Mellon Scaife, who died in 2014. In the 1990s, Mr. Scaife was one of the leading financiers of the right-wing effort to bring down the Clintons, bankrolling conservative think tanks and publications — as well as Judicial Watch.

Litigiousness is in the organization’s DNA: Its founder, Larry Klayman, once sued his mother. Mr. Klayman has described himself as a conservative Ralph Nader, but during Bill Clinton’s presidency, he often behaved more like a self-appointed Kenneth W. Starr, papering Washington with subpoenas related to every would-be Clinton scandal. His departure from the organization in 2003 was accompanied, unsurprisingly, by litigation: Mr. Klayman accused the organization, and his successor, Mr. Fitton, of “fraud, disparagement, defamation, false advertising and other egregious acts.”

Mr. Fitton responded that the allegations were “full of lies and distortions.” The suit is still in the courts.

Since he took over in 2003, Mr. Fitton has sought mainstream respectability for the organization.

It describes itself as a “nonpartisan educational foundation,” but Mr. Fitton says it is also a media organization. “We’re filling multiple roles here in a Washington where the traditional vehicles for government accountability have broken down,” he said..."

PkrBum

PkrBum

All she had to do was conduct official business on the required govt systems. It ain't rocket surgery.

VectorMan

VectorMan

If that's what it takes. Maybe they can sue her ass into the poorhouse. Crooked bitch!

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