Transcripts For CSPAN Hillary Clinton State Department Emails 20150404

From Judicial Watchs perspective, we have seen this before in the clinton administration. It came to our attention that 1. 8 million emails were not being records managed properly and they were not being searched in response to subpoenas and document requests. We were focused on litigation over the mishandling of fbi files i Hillary Clinton and the white house. It turned out the office of independent counsel investigations were being impacted. It was a big mess. Because the whistleblowers told us that, when they raised this with white house officials, this gap, they were told that if they told anyone about it, they would go to jail and lose their jobs. So, we had a monthlong hearing. It saw the testimony of white house officials, including john podesta, who was chief of staff. Charles ruff, now deceased then, white house counsel. Cheryl mills, a deputy counsel in the white house, later became chief of staff to mrs. Clinton in the state department. Although the court did not unfortunately, find of structuring of justice, it was called loathesome and he said that mills was responsible for the actions of the fiasco and were inadequate to address the problem. Mills is responsible to disclose to investigators about these emails. She had been highlighted for a special calling out by a federal court judge back during the clinton years in 1990 i guess the whole scandal took place in the late 90s and the ruling was more recent. I can tell you she was under oath back in the clinton administration. I dont think that was well understood. The Judicial Watch has been active in areas involving the freedom of information act and we have filed requests with the state department and have sued 20 times under the freedom of information act on issues ranging from mrs. Clintons ability to raise money through her husband and her husbands conflict of interests at the state department. We have obtained and reported on with the Washington Examiner about all the money she was raising and the conflict of interest checks that were not being done. She was able to get benefits for her and the foundation while she was in the state department from virtually anyone who wanted to get influence with this administration or influence a successor president to obama. The litigation, by the way, is ongoing. We were involved in litigation involving benghazi. Mrs. Clinton, notoriously, put out there with obama and rice the fake talking points that the benghazi attack was in response to a spontaneous demonstration caused by people upset by an internet video that no one had seen. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, publicly, they continued to put this line out that was designed to help president ial campaigns. The president s reelection and her nascent president ial campaign. Our document requests and freedom of information act lawsuits did much to uncover facts about benghazi, the security mess, the intelligence the administration, mrs. Clinton, and the state department was getting. The intelligence they were getting showed it was an attack and they knew it was from the get go. The information just came out over the last few weeks as a result of one of our lawsuits. That lawsuit was a follow on to another lawsuit that we filed that blue the scandal wide open last year. In that lawsuit, we were able to uncover white house documents showing the talking points susan rice used to get out to the American People on the sunday after the attack on all five of the sunday morning talk shows. It was a terrorist attack. It was not a terrorist attack. It was a spontaneous demonstration resulting from that internet video. The administration said, we are basing these on what intelligence is telling us and we have been investigated we have been investigating this and getting document after document from the administration. We have gotten talking points for congress. They were false. They were for congress. Finally, we get the documents from our lawsuit that shows it is the white house sending out the talking points to all of the people in the white house who are part of the political messaging of the administration and the planning was out of the white house for what susan rice would be saying on the and ghazi that sunday. On benghazi that sunday. The white house was lying about the attack and they were caught in the lie. They were lying about their involvement and the misleading information put out during the president ial campaign. That caused Speaker Boehner the document have been turned over during our foia lawsuit. It caused Speaker Boehner, who had resisted appointment of a committee to say, thanks to digital watch, we are appointing a committee. The committee resulted in disclosure of this material. Let me just say this. We got the materials out of the state department about the white house talking points and the smoking gun. We were curious that no Hillary Clinton emails were produced. Of course, we were thinking, maybe we did something wrong and we did not do something the right way. Maybe we only allowed one agency. To be sure, we filed another foia request asking about this issue of the white house talking points. Typical for the administration they told us they did not respond if they are required to under law. We filed again and we got documents we were given last time. We asked, what did you get and where did you search . When we did, thats only got the Justice Department essentially telling us, there are other things we may need to look at. They told the court in the filing, we gave Judicial Watch everything we could and there may be other things we need to look at. They did not tell us that they had not searched Hillary Clintons email accounts. By the way, when they told us and give us a list of the records they were withholding and the index involved, i few days before they had gotten the emails from clinton, the 55,000 records, they gave us this document and never told us that they had not even looked at these records. I do not think it is any coincidence that, a few weeks after, they have hem and haw to the court. These records were leaked in what i believe was a friendly leak to the new york times. We have lawsuits raised on representations the state department made that Hillary Clintons records had been searched. They deemed Judicial Watch and the federal courts, who they had also assured they had conducted a diligent search. To be clear, clinton began to cover up the day she came into office and it ended this month. When you are the head of an agency and you create email and a secret way to conduct government business, with half to assume you are up to no good. We have to assume you are up to no good. Think of the 20 or so cases in federal court. We have gone to a core asking for a hearing and another one to ask for a reopening. We are just one litigant. Think of all the litigation the state department is engaged in. Think of all the foia requests the administration gets. All of this has been distorted and obstructed. Think of the congressional requests for information and subpoenas the state department has gotten over the years that has been related to clintons emails and would require a search of those records. In my view, there are significant criminal liabilities for clinton, if there was an honest Justice Department. Congress is unable and unwilling to enforce powers to obtain these records and overcome Obama Administration obstruction evidenced by the Hillary Clinton scandal. Now, we see the president is taking steps to protect his emails and questions about them from being asked. His office, which 30 years prior to court action, had operated as if it was under the freedom of information act. George bush decided he did not like the questions he was getting about emails and the courts said, you are not covered anymore. The Obama Administration continued that argument and was successful in the Appellate Court at getting that done. There are regulations out there after the ruling that are subject to foia. Why, only after a few days, why, after a few days of following obamas disclosure that he communicated with clinton on the secret email account and people understood he used emails, did the office issue regulations that tore up them. That would be the agency under the freedom of information act that he would be asking questions about in terms of how white house emails are being maintained and organized. They cut off any possibility of questions under foia about the way obama kept his emails. By the way, we never received obamas emails in any of the freedom of information act requests. There are some questions there. This is a scandal not just about clinton. It is about the state department, the Justice Department, the obama white house, the failure of congress to conduct effective oversight and about the lack of interest in the media and in the institutions, the government institutions that are charged with enforcing the law and making sure that there is at least enough of an helmet of accountability that the secretary of not dare do what clinton has done. I will turn it over to our guests. We are lucky to have a former foia official who was in the Justice Department for many years and is as influential in setting up the system as anyone living today. A former prosecutor and independent prosecutor. He has overcome obstructions. We have our Judicial Watch council. I do not know if he will take this as a complement, but he is the number one foia litigator in the country. Im going to go through the backgrounds of all of our guests and we will get their presentations and allowed time for interaction with the audience. Dan joined the faculty in 2007 and, upon retiring from a career of government service, he now heads a law school and a nonpartisan project devoted to freedom of information and the study of government. For more than 25 years, he was the director of the Justice Department office of information and privacy, guiding all federal agencies on interpretation and interpretation of the freedom of information act and has supervised foia lawsuits in Appellate Courts. I do not want to know how many times you were on the other side of our cases. He was in the dhs and the National Security council. He testified on behalf of his group, the collaboration of government secrecy before the House Committee on oversight and reform. He is an expert on government foia administration and implementation of foia policies. We are lucky to have him. Joining us, at the end, is joe. He represents individuals, corporations, and other entities. He was part of civil matters and he and his wife have done great work on behalf of whistleblowers that should be commended. He has extensive experience as a litigator and investigator having served as both an attorney and as an independent counsel in the clinton passport search matter. It was an investigation of Bush Administration appointees. He was named special counsel by the u. S. House of representatives. He was retained by the state of new york to investigate Eliot Spitzer and he has extensive experience in capitol hill. He is the counsel to the Senate Judiciary affairs and intelligence committee. We cannot get better than joe in matters of prosecutions of government corruption. Paul heads Judicial Watchs Litigation Department and has been with it since the inception. He has argued in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of Judicial Watch and clients. He has been a spokesman with legal commentary appearing in major media and print publications. In addition to managing daytoday operations of the department, which lawyers understand is interesting, paul is the member of the board of directors for Judicial Watch. He is responsible for the work we do, like folks like me. Without his expertise, all of the success you read about, we would not have. He and his legal team deserve so much credit for our good work. He graduated from the university of illinois and received his jd from au in 1990. The guests are going to speak for a bit and we will collaborate a little bit and talk amongst ourselves. I will turn it over first to mr. Metcalfe. Dan i should say three things. Tom speak more loudly. Dan i became involved in organizing this analyzing this pattern with clinton at three quests of journalists who had participated in my academic programs. I felt an obligation to look at things and applied my expertise. Apply my expertise under the freedom of information act and the federal records act. I do not claim to have expertise with respect to criminal law and whether things are a violation of law or illegal and the way that someone thinks of those words. When i talk about something being unlawful or being in violation of the law, i am speaking of civil and not criminal statutes. I will defer to the former u. S. Attorney with that. I will base my remarks very heavily, if not exclusively, pun intended, on what has been omitted by clinton admitted by clinton or on her the half by her counsel. On her behalf by her counsel. We will start by looking at the first weeks she was in office. There are four time chapters here. She began in 2009 as secretary of state. She departed for years later, in 2013. She did what ever she did do in 2014 in response to request that came from the state department. Currently, when she is saying and not saying at press conferences or other remarks made on her behalf. At the onset, in 2009, as a new secretary of Cabinet Agency or a new agency, more generally would have a briefing with people at her agency. Very likely, it would have been the undersecretary and others. They would have colored desk covered the basic dos and donts they would have covered the basic dos and donts of the privacy act procurement matters and things like that. Evidently, out of that meeting or series of communications, i do not know how this went, it developed that she began to use a personal email account exclusively for all of her official business. That is something, right there is a typical atypical. The policies and practices is that it is absolutely prohibited to ever use a personal email account in the conduct of business. If you are a busy secretary of state and you reach for a device and it is a personal email account, no one is going to come and tell you, stop, you cannot address the problems of the world and represent the United States because youre holding the wrong piece of equipment in your hand. The federal records act, as a practical matter, allows for occasional use of a personal email account under exceptional circumstances. It does say, beyond that, when that is done on an exceptional basis, the official or a assistant has the responsibility to take the communication and transmit it, forward it, into the state Department Record keeping systems. However, clinton says clearly that she did not begin or ever use the official email account or the state Department Email account. She only used the personal email account. Moreover, she never took the additional step in in the instance in any instance with respect to any of her communications. The next aspect of it, distinct, but related, is that, rather than have her personal email account be handled, for a lack of a better word, by an internet the problems of the world and represent the United States because youre holding the wrong piece of equipment in your hand. Indeed, they recognize that. The federal records act, as a practical matter, allows for occasional use of a personal email account under exceptional circumstances. It does say, beyond that, when that is done on an exceptional basis, then the official, or a staff assistant has the responsibility to take the communication and transmit it, forward it, into the state departments Record Keeping systems. However, secretary clinton says quite clearly that she did not begin to use or ever use the official email account or the state Department Email account. She only used the personal email account. Moreover, she never took the additional step in any instance with respect to any of her communications. Then, the next aspect of it, distinct, but related, is that rather than have her personal email account be handled, for a lack of a better word, by an Internet Service provider like yahoo or google, she made use of a private server at her home. So that meant that during the four years of her tenure, all of her official communications were outside of the official channels of the state department, at least at her end as the sender or recipient. And resided purely in her personal control or property. Ownership, if that is the correct legal word. When she left the department in 2013, it is commonplace for Government Officials, especially highlevel ones, to have special attention paid to them and particular attention paid to them for purposes of Records Management and archival activities. I had it even when i left is a mere career appointee at the gsfive level. And the proper delineation made at what is personal and what is official. In the official category, what is a record and what is not a record. The whole thing being, some things will be preserved through the archives and some will not. That, apparently, did not take place. Then what happens in 2014 according to secretary clinton and statements that have been made on her behalf is that she was responding to a special request by the department of state and it is fuzzy what that was all about. She nevertheless, she undertook the step of revealing analyzing, dealing with the emails that were on the personal server. I am going to use round numbers here. She said there were roughly 60,000 emails. Not to be confused with pages. Roughly 60,000 emails. Of those 60,000, and it might have been 62,000, roughly 30,000 or 31,000 were deemed to her to be personal in nature. She then took action with respect to what was on the official side of her delineation. That amounted to 55,000 pages from 31,000 emails. She produced that are not in electronic form with any meditated that might surround that or for it to be researched proficiently, but she sent that in paper form to the department of state, leaving the remainder, which she said at a press conference on march 10 were destroyed or deleted. Now the question becomes, there is deletion and there is deletion. Were they completely deleted . Or where they completely destroyed . Now she is apparently saying, or it is set on her behalf to the House Committee or a subcommittee, that they were indeed, deleted in their entirety. Now, what this amounted to is a flouting, if not a violation, of the federal records act requirements because the federal records act says to all federal agencies and federal agency employees, hey, you have an obligation to take some steps to preserve things for posterity. Ok . You cannot preserve something that does not exist. The first obligation of the federal records act is to memorialize agency action. Back in the day, memorialization used to mean a creating a piece of paper. The question was, would something that describes the action taking place, would it be reduced to writing and be deemed appropriate to be preserved for custody by the National Records and Archives Administration . Nowadays, of course with , electronic mail, that is itself, the very vehicle of agency action. It is not just memorialization. It is how, in part, business is done. What she did, by not just using her personal email account in exceptional cases and not having an official account at all, she acted utterly contrary to the federal records act. Frankly, when i first looked at it, i cannot tell for sure, as to whether the state department had contacted the National Archives folks who oversee the implementation, just as i had at the Justice Department with respect to foia. I have just learned that no contact was made. The archives have sent a formal , i will use the word, request to the department of state asking for a report on how the hell this all happened. I do not believe there has been a response. But i certainly understand why the archives has made this request. Now we come to the freedom of information act. It is not unimaginable that there will be a request made to the department of state that could be subject matter request that, by their nature, could logically encompass email communication at a highlevel of the department. Or and this is probably more to the point for the purposes requests that specifically ask for her emails and it could mean emails from her as a sender or to her as a recipient. From what i gather, there has been resounding silence, with respect to focus on her attention to that. Which is entirely consistent with the fact that, if you are the officer in the state department and you are responding to requests in 20122013, you go to the secretarys office and you say we have the requests and we need to search through secretary clintons emails. The answer will be, that will not take very long, because we do not have any to search through. We do not have any as a sender or recipient. As a practical matter, that is not a search that is the least bit viable under the freedom of information act. That is why i have referred to her regime, so to speak, as a prescription of blatant circumvention of the freedom of information act. The other ingredient i should add on top of that is, because i have worked on so many scandals during the administration. I have stopped counting at the number 23. More than two dozen. Anything that is regarded as a scandal or controversy has records and it becomes an issue as to what will happen with respect to the records. Will it the made public in any other way . Or subject to subpoena disclosure and civil litigation . Having worked on those, and i do not profess to know every last scandal alleged coverup, i know enough to know that secretary clinton had knowledge of how the freedom of information act works. I worked with folks in the white house, including briefly cheryl mills, and there is no doubt that she, in my mind based on my firsthand experience, she knows full well exactly how it all works and what she was doing. Now, i am going to suggest to you, before i talk on too much longer, that a way of looking at this consistent with what i said about the oldfashioned paper form and the new fashioned email form is that, what everyone is focusing on is the paper form. Just for a moment, imagine that all of these emails, every email that she sent or received, including attachments, during her tenure that they were piles of paper and were on a desk right here. And i am going to suggest there are eight piles on the desk. The first would be outgoing emails she sent to people in the department of state. And indeed, they would exist at the state department on the recipient level, so to speak and be subject to foia request that could never be adequately searched, given the practicalities. The others would be communications from the department of state. State department people, piles one and two. The next would be federal employees not at the state. She is fast and loose on that at the press conference. She had it both ways. There are federal employees at other federal agencies who were at least recipients, if not senders, to her. So those are piles three and four. Then the third set of piles would be recipients or senders from her. People who exchanged with her who were other people, not feds. State employees, u. N. Employees, other people, whatever that means. She had a press conference and placed emphasis on the fact that the vast majority of her recipients of her correspondents were within the state department. What about the minority . Those are piles five and six. Then i am going to suggest that seven and eight are what she has determined to be personal. Things she sent, one pile. Things she received, another. I dont think anyone doubts or quarrels with the fact that are some things that are properly in that category. It is unfortunate that it was on a personal email account that also had a official business. But that is entirely legitimate. Although, one could say that perhaps if 50 of her emails or were personal, i know when i was a Government Official and i had personal emails, my wife would say, you are going to be late and get on my case about it. That did not amount to 50 of my emails. About 5 max. How it got to be 5050 in her case provides some suspicion right there. There is the mysterious ninth pile. I will just leave you with that thought. What would the ninth pile be . Reportedly, and here i will be clear to say that what i am telling you i do not know firsthand. On the all i know is what ive read online. But it has been reported that her three top aides used her personal account again, i do not know this for a fact or their own personal accounts to communicate with one another. And i would suggest that that is a distinct potential pile that ought to be a matter of distinct focus and concern in this case. I say this, either way, just by way of concluding, i have no ax to grind with Hillary Clinton. I am a registered democrat and a selfdescribed liberal. I dont even use the word progressive. I didnt get the memo when that change. I am a liberal. Ok . I am amazed by some people saying they are going to vote for her and not the republican. I am just calling it as i see it under the law. Time thank you, dan. It is good that you are retired. The Justice Department would be unhappy with your testimony. Dan i was constrained in the past. You would be surprised how candid i was before i retired. Tom i do not know if we could do much better than the careful analysis and very informative analysis of the issues here. As i said in my introduction, a force to be reckoned with on these areas of law and scandal in the sense of how our institutions in washington respond to evidence and violations of law by high Government Officials. And the trouble involved in holding those officials to account. His experience is hard to match in that area. So we are very lucky to have his presentation. Jo. Joe thank you, tom. One hardly knows where to begin in this matter. The vast array of targets for legitimate inquiry is truly astounding. After 30 years of increasing accountability, transparency and openness, this incident involving the secretary of state emails has stopped the clock on accountability. This is the end of the road for all of the people who care about getting information from their government. As someone who has investigated organized crime, espionage insider trading, and other things, who has investigated congressional investigations of the teamsters and other things the basic facts in this case cry out for a formal investigation under the law. Not just by congress, by the department of justice. Let us take a look at what dan just said. What you have here is a rai is a brazen, brazen decision to prevent the disclosure of Public Information to the press, the congress, the courts, and the American People. It was a deliberate strategy from the beginning of her tenure as secretary of state. I will ask this question to dan and paul as a rhetorical question. But i do not think it will be. What if, in fact, the department of state, from day one, was the one who put the server there . And i think they did. And they have known about this before they ever told anybody about it. I believe that will be proved and i believe it to be the case. But i do not know it yet. Now, investigations and how you do them, i will come back to the department of justice in a minute. Lets look at how this got started. The investigation of benghazi, one of the phony scandals, as they have been described, have described by the white house began with committees in the house. Armed services, foreign intelligence, and oversight doing a generic investigation. One of the things you learn as an investigator is to create opportunities for the people you are looking at to make mistakes. You give them a rope. One of the ways you do that is you issue subpoenas. You do not send letters asking for information. You send subpoenas, which have the force of law. I will explain to you why that is important and give an example from the teamsters investigation in the 1990s. The reason you send a subpoena is that it creates a legal duty, obligation to comply, whether it is with a committee, to a court or to a grant jury. Or, in a civil case, when you are asked to produce evidence in a civil case. We will get to that in a minute. The House Committees, with the limited exception of the House Oversight committee, the Armed Services committee, ed royce and mike rogers, conducted in three of the most incompetent, unsuccessful, and unproductive investigations of a major Public Policy question in the history of the house of representatives. It is hard to describe the incompetence. Incompetence that led to the fact which we now know to be true. That none of them, not a one new knew that Hillary Clinton had a private email account from which she conducted all of her business. Could you imagine, three committees and a fourth, investigating over a year and a half. Period and none of them knew that she had that server. You cannot imagine the conversations that are going on for people in Law Enforcement and outside of Law Enforcement. And people who used to work and on permanent subcommittees about the incompetence of the republican investigations. It is staggering. It is also the reason why mr. Dowdgowdys committee it just exists. I will try to easily about the server and the attempt to get it. And what you do. When you are a prosecutor, you have search warrants and subpoenas. You can get stuff. When you are in the house, it is not the same. You may be a public grand jury, but you cannot arrest anybody. Although, the house has the ability to arrest someone and hold them in contempt. That has not been done since the 1800s. I urge them to bring it back. But you the powers that exist to investigate generally are pretty powerful. You can mitigate the issues, but it is not the same as a federal prosecution. Now, you do have options though. And you can make a problem exist in a bigger way. First of all you have to issue , subpoenas, which those committees did not due to the do until the end of their investigations, which is an embarrassment. I will tell you what we did in we were investigating a corrupt 1997. Union from top to bottom run by ron. It was outrageous what was going on. We were retained and the special counsel was gingrich. We began the investigation. By the way, the process ended with kerry being thrown out of office and actually a reformed president , james hoffa, being made president by election and he has been reelected several times. In the course of our investigations, we discovered the teamsters had meetings and recorded their meetings of the board and we wanted those. So we subpoenaed them. And at the same time, the u. S. Attorney in new york was conducting a criminal investigation of kerry and the teamsters. The teamsters general counsel called ms. White and said that he had gotten a subpoena from the house. For their board tapes, he wondered if he could deliver those tapes to the u. S. Attorney in new york so that we would not get them. She said that would be fine. And, they did. They delivered them to new york. Several years of tape. When we discovered that, we called the u. S. Attorney in new york and said, you realized the tapes that were handed over to to you under subpoena by the house of representatives. And they said, well, yes, that doesnt matter. I said, will you please turn over the tapes . They said, no. I said ok, we will be back in touch tomorrow. Now, what is a fourth with subpoena . It says, give it to me. It means, you turn it over right now. It is not a search warrant, it is just as good under the law. If you dont comply, you better have a good reason. It was the first one ever issued by the house. It was delivered to new york. The two agents delivered it. Called called the u. S. Attorney and said, would you turn over the tapes . And they said, no. And i said, here are your two choices. You can turn over the tapes or tomorrow morning, on the house of representatives, you will be held in contempt of congress. Make the decision. You have five minutes. We got the tapes. What in the world is the house not doing about the server . The notion that they have to wait the evidence has already theoretically been destroyed according to the secretary and her estimable lawyer. All the emails she deemed personal, whatever that means have been permanently deleted. When i began this, i said, this brazen this is brazen. Just think of what they have admitted publicly. She has admitted that she destroyed government documents under subpoena by the house of representatives and under subpoena in civil litigation all over the United States. Who says that the deletions were personal . Her, her staff, and her lawyers, based on her representations. That is not good enough. And what is going to happen now is, not only up on the hill, but in the case of all the freedom of information acts and cases that are pending, ap, you name it, there are going to have to be affidavits filed under oath. These will be doj lawyers, department of state lawyers, people who do Records Management at the department of justice and the department of state, cheryl mills, and a whole bunch of other people, including clinton. Mrs. Clinton is going, i will tell you this, she is going to testify in a federal court. She is going to have to testify in a federal court. And so is cheryl mills. And i do not know if any judge sitting in those proceedings will say that cheryl mills is quote unquote, loathesome like lambert did. But there will be keen interest if judges are like they used to be in why no one was ever told that a private email system was the sole basis upon which the secretary of state conducted business. Let me say this again this is the secretary of state. This is not somebody over at epa, who is working in a bureau trying to figure out Carbon Dioxide problems. This is the secretary of state. And an historical figure, in terms of the operations of the United States government. And if you go back and look at benghazi, going there just for a minute, because i dont want this to be about benghazi, but when the accountability review board did there investigation was going on the bank as a slaughter, the benghazi slaughter, they made it their business to not interview clinton. Really digging. Mr. Pickering, the head of the review board, along with pathetic admiral mullen. Said that they didnt think it was necessary to talk to the secretary. I think c congress think it will be necessary to talk to ms. Clinton. Her indications have set the jor constitutional confrontation. She has destroyed history. For anybody who cares about government, republican democrat, tea party, lefto nutzo, she destroyed history with no accountability. With no transparency. Sheo right to do that. And there should be a federal criminal investigation going on right now at the department of justice. They do not have to have a panel with a grand jury. They can start with a grand jury. She took it upon herself, used to staff and with the advice of counsel, destroyed evidence. Nobody knows whether what she had was evidence until somebody looks at it. If she is right and everything she had was personal, and i bet you the Clinton Foundation is considered personal, she has committed a crime, unequivocally. If there is not a preliminary inquiry, it is a disgrace. Now, i will just say this, all the people who are lawyers involved in this and will have to produce affidavits, the better get good lawyers. This is not going to be pretty. Thanks. Tom thank you. If i can clarify, clinton said there was no classified information on the server. Yesterday, in a court filing the agency suggested they would be reviewing the records. Lots of the people lots of people in the agency had to review her records. Reading between the lines, it was clear they would have to review the records, raising other issues on the handling of classified information. I thought it would be appropriate to close with you, paul. Remarks are in terms of what ought to be done, we generally know what will be done. It is going to be up to Judicial Watch to get to the bottom of this and get the Justice Departments conflict of mr. Sears interest here. Given the Justice Departments conflict of mr. Sears interest here. A political lack of interest in doing the hard work that joe suggesting and putting it charitably incompetence. Judicial watch has proven itself time and time again and being able to get information and the accountability that joe has been imploring other institutions and to dissolve through too often it is all through judicial washes watches Judicial Watchs work here. Can you bring our listeners uptodate here on where we are and where we are going and your view of mr. Metcalfs comments . Paul i thought it would be good to talk about what Judicial Watch is done about the revelation of senator clintons emails. We did what we always do which is start our foia. We served at least 17 new foia request in the past three or four weeks on the state department including, as joe was glad to hear, foia requests about the server. What the state department knew about the , and the state Department Paid about the server. They are responsible for security at the clintons residence. We have also sent out foia requests for records about the secretaries ipod usage, like their usage, iphone usage. We have asked for her separation statement. There have been some news reports that she did not do one. We are waiting to see if there are records on that. If there is no record response it might indicate she didnt do it. We ask for all 55,000 pages of records. We ask for records about who knew what and when. We got about 17 request outstanding and some more in the offer. Some of those will start, in early april and you can be that that that lawsuits will be filed in april. Pending foia request to identify request that implicated mrs. Clintons emails. We saw one new foia lawsuit within two days of the revelation on march 2. We File Hundreds of foia lawsuits over the years. So one of the things that we had to do was go back to our database of pending and even closed foia lawsuits to see what this revelation what effect it might of had on any pending or closed cases. We have identified at least nine pending cases that could be impacted and eight closed cases. With respect to the pending cases, we have asked courts for status conferences and reached out to cost council on what the state department is planning to do. What the things they are saying they plan to do is process all 55,000 records in response and make them available through foia. Daniel precision is important in this area. Paul it is pages of records. We asked the court to open some close cases. The state department had represented to us in some cases that they searched the office of the secretary, and what is called the executive secretariat, which is the Central Office for highlevel state Department Officials correspondence and records including the email. In some of those cases, we were told those offices were searched. At no point were we told that secretary clintons emails were not captured for that other highlevel state department employees, like delete brains and a couple of others. They were likely not captured either because they were using a private server, so we have reopened moved to reopen one case. We are in negotiations with the state department to reopen a second case. We have others that we are looking at for reopening. The federal procedure will allow you to reopen the case if there is new evidence that is discovered and surprise is great fun im not sure what it means. Also for fraud misrepresentation or misconduct. The first cased we moved to reopen, we moved under the provision of authorizing cases for fraud, misconduct, and misrepresentation. The state department did not oppose that. Interesting. They claim that they do not realize that we were opening under fraud and misrepresentation, but it was plain in the papers. They seem to be open to reopening cases to go back and revisit how foia requests were affected. That is just sort of a handson practical approach to what the group uses foia, how is impacted, what it has had to go through in order to try to figure out how its efforts have been affected and what can be done about it. Im sure we sent spent hundreds of thousands of staff hours working on the problems. It has been a tremendous strain on the organization just to respond to mrs. Clintons decision that she did not want to follow the federal records act. Tom let me ask you and start the questioning with i always said the catch me if you can presidency and the shell game that is taking place with these records. It seems to me the legal position the best i can tell if there is a legal position is that, well, Hillary Clinton took these records out of the state department or she didnt have them within the state department, or they were in control of the state department. Too bad, we searched everywhere we thought they would be. Foia didnt recover this. We will look at those and may get some info. Anything before that, we do not have an obligation to search those records. What is your response given your list. Experience into foia that the head of an agency can of evade foia simply by removing records from the office . Paul as professor metcalf reference, the federal records act requires the records be kept that official government actions those records after they are made have to be processed, stored, and available to be used. It is the head of the agencys responsibility to do that and make sure that records are being kept and are accessible and can be used and requested. This notion that the head of the agency, secretary clinton, could concoct this game by which should would board all of her obligations under the federal records act is not an acceptable response. The question is what remedy foia allows. There might be some other provisions of law that allow remedies, like some criminal provisions. One criminal provision makes it a crime to remove federal records from federal agencies without the permission of the archivist. I think our position is that these records were federal records and they were removed when mrs. Clinton concocted this scheme to make sure that all these records would be on a private server and not on the state department server. We are going to have to test when we get to the stage in court when we are talking about remedying. Daniel it might depend on your definition of her move. Paul we are talking about the clintons. Daniel from point a to point b, it made never have existed at point a and only came to exist that point b. It was arguably a functional removal in some way, i suppose. Paul it was on the computer until they hit the send button. Daniel was her personal account. It was not on any state Department Computer im afraid. Paul those are some great facts we can get into with discovery and foia request, but right, it depends on whats the definition of removing spirit ite is. It is not like sticking the records in the stocks. Socks. Daniel the glories of oldfashioned paper copies as opposed to just electronic impulses. Paul it strikes me, given my laymans understanding, given that you are the head of an agency and you set up a system to conduct all government business that the government counts. Tom you may pretend to have personal emails on that, but many folks conduct personal business on government accounts. It is frowned upon, but frankly, it shouldnt happen. As mrs. Clinton said, hundreds of people in the agency knew that she had this account, and as head of the agency, everyone knew what was going on. The idea that she removed this in any substantial way that would prevent them from being subject to foia. Our goal is with recovering the emails that were deleted and preserve those that are still out there and make all of it subject to disclosure as long requires. As the law requires. The Justice Department is conflicted on this. We have Justice Department lawyers that i believe new what their client was doing in the foia litigation in keeping this material from us and they did not tell the court. We ran into the story with the lowest emails. Im convinced that the force of disclosure of the lost emails. They would not have told anyone, but for i think the foia process , for requiring the disclosure. When we were told those emails were lost, we pushed harder against the Justice Department and in my view, they continue to mislead the court. But it became, especially since the court one of more explanations, they fessed up and said they may be on secret email service that our backups. There are other emails out there. When it lost emails became one unlost very quickly. Joe let me just say that i am embarrassed. Im absolutely astounded by what Judicial Watch has a compost in this arena. Accomplished in this arena. It is amazing watching this being conducted the weight should be. Excellent lawyers, good arguments, and in covering some of the most important facts that have yet to be revealed until now. I want to go on top of what dan has said. When mrs. Clinton decided, from the beginning of her tenure as a constitutional officer, shes a constitutional officer. That she would procure a server that i dont believe with assistance of the department of state and installing it in her home, that when she did that chappaqua became the department of state. Those records were in possession of the United States government at that point. Im going to be fascinated by the argument that she is going to make that they were not. She moved the secretarys office from foggy bottom to chappaqua. Theres simply no disputing that. She made the decision that her business would be conducted on that server. That was her decision and not anybody elses decision. When she did that, she transferred federal records into that house. And into that server. They may very well argue whatever they want to argue about it, but i think they are going to have a really tough time convincing anybody but those were not government records from day one, in her possession, in that place. And when she ordered them to be permanently deleted, and nobody knows what she ordered deleted nobody knows. Representations are irrelevant. They mean nothing. They are of such limited evidentiary value. Given this scheme that worked out here to deny access and information, that this is going to be fun to watch. Daniel that line of reasoning is basically twofold. When she established or began using her personal email account, that was functionally an official email account and that when she involved her private email server, that was functionally a government email server, as a practical matter. There is some basis in law not resume to add to presume to add to legal analysis if you look at footnote 10 in the kissinger decision, you would ask the court to apply footnote 10 and expand upon a little bit on this extraordinary fact pattern. That would be supportive of what joe was saying. Tom so the kissinger decision was essentially a decision based on how the government could get records from a former official was arguably government records. My understanding of the kissinger decision, and i do not know if this is the footnote you reference, it is kind of tough on times. It is not to say the court gave itself and out that ahead of an agency taking all the records of the government all the government activities and keeping them off campus means the government or a foia requester has no recourse under law. Am i right . Daniel footnote 10 basically identifies the particular fact that happened to be the face and kissinger which is that the foia request filed by the oppressed press was received by the agency after the removal. That remains the question that the court played with a little bit as to what the outcome wouldve been had that not been so. Had the foia request been in place and perfected, so to speak, prior to the removal. Paul let us remember what kissinger did. When his time was over, he removed official documents. In his term was over, he removed all the official documents. Mrs. Clinton started her removal of documents at the inception of her secretariat. She began with a purposeful action to conceal and to eventually, according to her and her lawyer, delete information which is presumptively public record. It is in my view what kissinger did is normal. He wanted to write his memoirs and took the papers. To get bunches of them back, but they existed. He didnt destroy any. She admits that she destroyed more than 50 of everything that was on that server. If anybody thinks that everything that is official has been turned over, you are living in a dream world. Tom i do not know what the facts will show. I suspect that when she said the secret service is protecting the server, she was not so naive to think that physically protecting a server from being stolen out of her house was sufficient. If that wasnt an accidental truth, the secret service was maintaining the server, and indeed was a state department server, whenever she deleted those records, who in the agency knew that they allowed us as clinton to delete those records from the state agency server . Who in the white house new about this issue . Why do they allow her to delete those records . The implications here are somewhat really staggering. You can see why you have the sensitivity and initially, smart democrats on the hill, not really knowing what all the facts were, they have been around the block, people like senator feinstein and even dick durbin. They came out and said just tell us what happened. Mrs. Clinton did not read between the lines and decided to be truthful to those requests. I think folks on both Political Parties understand there is a big issue here. We have gone over, but i want to leave some time for questions before we go. Mark of Washington Examiner in front here. I think we have a microphone. We are going to take one of the microphones from here and if dad joe could share. Reporter i want to go to the meeting that clinton got at the outset. If i had to kennedy and that meeting, and i say to her, he used government email and she says no im going to use my own, what are my legal responsibilities and obligations at that point to attempt to ensure, or at least to memorialize, what happened to that meeting . Daniel this is a civil matter so i will take it. Tom for the moment. [laughter] daniel for the moment, right. I can only speak to comparison i what happened to the Justice Department every time that was a new attorney general. Routinely, the sort of meeting would be held in one form of fashion sooner rather than later. I would dare say the top administrative career official of an agency house the responsible to of to make it clear of what the policy requires, to be more refined and say, well just because you are not prohibited from ever using a personal account does not mean that you can always use a personal account. Theres a lot of data between the two. Assuming the worst for the purposes of this question that he learned in that meeting, if he in fact was there, and we are speculating. She did not intend to do that. Then, i believe he wouldve had an obligation at a minimum to contact with people at the National Archives and Records Administration who hold the statutory responsibility for popper believe implementing properly implement and the federal records act with the idea that the arguments having learned of this development would then call the secretary and say, secretary clinton, you just cant do that. It is not consistent with the federal records act. If on the other hand he did not win that, or no one learned that, it was just stated to be what should be done and she went away and did what she did on her own, then the question would be when was that learned and with that same obligation arise . Reporter the next part of my question at some point, it became obvious that she was using nongovernment email. Was there an obligation at that point . Daniel those anonymous people as recipients im going to cut them a bit of a break, so to speak, because they do not know as mere program people, they are not administrative people. They do not know what took place in the meeting. So maybe they can assume theyre not supposed the experts of the federal records act. Maybe they can assume it is ok. I do not think they have a direct obligation to do otherwise is to take any action. It really is on the administrative people who have been delegated authority from the archivist to make sure that the federal records act is followed at that agency. So the Records Management people learned thereafter, yes, they indeed would have that. At the assistant secretary us the if the assistant secretary of state of Foreign Affairs and of that, that would be a different matter entirely. Reporter the question is at the heart of the matter. Mr. Kennedy is a very important person and this entire scenario of records production and a policy issues related to record production. Paul mr. Kennedy is one tough cookie. Joe mr. Kennedy is one tough cookie. The ruins peoples careers forward. If he was the person to brief mrs. Clinton on what her duties were, i can assure you that wouldve in a groveling presentation. The bottom line here is that whatever the duties were of a whole bunch of people at the state department, they did not perform them. I agree with dan. You cannot put the onus on the people inside the state Department Getting emails from hillary. As far as they are concerned that is one email. They do not know where she is or what she is doing. At a certain point, the Information Management people at the department know that she is not using an official email cap it they know that for a fact. Because she does not have one. It does not take a lot for somebody to start asking questions like, excuse me, madam secretary, just how are you communicating with people in the department and where are those records . This is a staggering in the brazenness of evasion a legal duty by everybody at the state department, and especially the secretary, it is simply staggering. It is unbelievable. The straight face, she stands up at the u. N. And talks about yoga left lessons and laughs about it in a media meeting and jokes about her emails. And the media in the audience laugh uproariously at this wonderful event. What she has done has undermined peoples confidence in the ability to get valuable public records. Her records were valuable. What ever you may think of her she was the secretary of state. That is a pretty big job. And she took it upon herself to change history. She does not have the right or the authority to change history. But she did. Tom and mr. Kennedy still is that the agency and responsible for managing records and the idea that there is a distinction between mrs. Clinton personally she is agency for legal purposes here. There is no daylight as far as we are concerned between this Current State Department and mrs. Clinton. This is state department responsibility and the folks there are liable potentially as joe points out. Daniel can i make one minor little point . There are a lot of facts that are undisputed and they come from senator clinton herself. I do not know for a fact that Patrick Kennedy was in such a meeting. For all i know, for sure, he might have been having surgery that month and could of the a deputy or two deputies or Something Like that. We really do not know for sure but the responsibility is in his office for somebody to take the lead on such important matters. Tom there have been several court filing since the scandal broke and i think we have all the lawyers here from Judicial Watch have been involved and i think im correct in saying that the state department has yet to disclose to us when they became aware of these accounts of mrs. Clinton. Joe i agree completely with what dan said about not knowing who it was. Heres the better question we did not get a briefing at all. I will tell you something he didnt get everything. She treated she was treated how thomas bickering pickering was treated. You dont get cheryl mills angry at you by asking tough questions. She was treated like a queen. She did not have to do anything. I would be amazed if she got the traditional breathing that other secretaries of state have gotten when they came in to office. They probably wouldve given it to mrs. Mills. Daniel im going to agree with your speculation and one respect. I happen to know firsthand that it was an attorney general of the Justice Department that was treated not unlike that. That makes it believable and more plausible. That was alberto gonzales. When i deposed him on his understanding of the federal records and privacy act, that became painfully clear. Tom it is time for one more question. Yes, sir. Reporter the department has a category similar to for official use only. Something like that. It is above a classified, below classified. I am wondering that so many of the daily emails within the department if they are not classified, they would probably be this lou category. Does that make some difference on the security or lack thereof on the server in new york . Daniel having some familiarity with what is called sensitive, but unclassified information as i wrote the dam white house memo and march of 2009 that started everything off on that, i do know that the state department uses to such designations. Two such designations. It is called a pseudosecrecy realm. One is called no form and the other is no dis. It might be used for some official reason. They have to do with labels that are attached to records most feasibly in the paper route that call for special safeguarding on special handling. Your point is a good one. I touched on it in the political Magazine Article that i wrote a couple of weeks ago that even if nothing on her server was classified, which is what she has said, and for all any of us in this room know is entirely possible, it was not reviewed for classification which is another matter. Even if that is so, it is very hard to believe there was not at least some sensitive but unclassified information of that level that was there for which a special handling requirement would have been warranted under how the state department ordinarily operates. Tom if we take mrs. Clinton that her own word that this server was private just imagine the types of information that wouldve been left on the equivalent of an internet part park bench by mrs. Clinton as a result. You have classified information potentially. Personnel issues are presumably part of her daytoday duties. Someones personnel files are on the internet park bench. Some of privacy act protected files are on the internet part park bench. Sensitive information. Maybe sources that need to be protected are on the internet park bench. Maybe the private information of corporations doing business with the state department are on the internet park bench. Maybe security concerns about benghazi or Security Issues related to other diplomatic duties are on that park bench. You have all this information that the agency was supposed to protect. And protecting that information, she is protecting other people in the agency and the citizens outside of the agency. And other Government Officials outside of the agency, both here and abroad. There are a lot of people that have been harmed by this misconduct potentially if this is not as secured as it was supposed to be. This is why you get the reaction that you are getting from joe, and as paul has pointed out, we have been gained as well. Gamed as well. We have access to the courts. We have got great lawyers , but a lot of people have been gained gamed and will never get justice by this. I will disclose on this note. As i said, i think this whole case was broken open because of our insistence on getting information from mrs. Clinton and her office about her involvement in the benghazi scandal. We talked about the benghazi scandal is just a political issue, but is about whether or not for americans died unnecessarily as a result of decisions made by mrs. Clinton and the Obama Administration, both in terms of fusing to ride security that was requested refusing to provide security that was requested. And when they were attacked, not going to their aid. There are people who have died that need to be vindicated. That is why we are investigating this. And if a legal or to go protect those people, the failure to provide them security, and then lying about what happened for political purposes has really decimated the morale of the military and other civilian personnel the plate overseas. Because the compact has been that of things hit the fan, the government will be there to save us. We were invest getting why that compact was torn asunder by this administration and this is what we have uncovered. Even after all that became public and the controversy in the select Committee Asking questions, this person, voted, deleted all for emails. By the emission of her own lawyer. Admission of her own lawyer. This is not a typical political scandal. Daniel can i just touch on one point with respect to the word delete . And that is a relatively recent development as of friday last week went, i believe the phrase used by the committee or subcommittee is that he heard from David Kendall that it was a light clean. Wiped clean. Im told by my technical experts, which is largely my security computer daughter who works for google out in california, that traditionally in the old days to wipe something clean you would degauss it with an electromagnetic fix or you would even mechanically take a hammer to the darn hard drive, but nowadays, there is software, especially something called kill disk, aptly named perhaps, whereby it is approved by the nsa if you run it three times over, it will sufficiently overwrite what is there and im told that is everything. Not just the text of the email itself, but the metadata surrounding it and the server logs. If she did that and took that extraordinary step, and perhaps it would all be gone, but then the very taking of that step might be a basis for inferring intent and that would be more joes area as to what she was taking great measures. Joe i hope you didnt give her any good ideas now. Tom let me say one thing factually about benghazi. It is white house or kennedy is such an important person. Just remember who he was. Joe all those african bombings during the 90s, he was in charge of security. He got promoted after this disastrous. During his tenure to this day, during benghazi, ambassador stephen wanted security increased. He had 30 people and he wanted more. The country was a disaster. Do you know what kennedy did . He reduced it from 38 to nine. Nine security people. That is it. Tom we just obtain these records about mrs. Clintons top staff, cheryl mills, her executive assistant, which is an ambassador ranking in the state department. It is not what we traditionally understand an assistant to be. You have the rank of ambassador. What did they know about these emails . Theres no doubt that mrs. Clinton and her top people were being updated about the truth of what was going on in benghazi as the attack occurred, and yet they put out that false information. What is there to hide . There is a great incentive, not only on benghazi, but on abusing her office to raise money for her political operation and the foundation. Basically to launder money for her personal benefit is something that will be of significance. As i said, this idea of personal versus official records is one that you have to take their explanations with a grain of salt. I am pleased to say that our Litigation Team here at Judicial Watch are going to be raising issues with the courts. And various courts and we are set we are ready before to federal court judges. We are prepped to go to other court judges. There has got to be accountability here. I would encourage those of you listening to ask the members of congress why they arent doing what Judicial Watch is doing . Why arent they hiring Judicial Watch to do another special prosecution of the scandal . And why is Justice Department continuing to do nothing, and arguably and hed further impede further information gathering about the scandal and acting as a cocounsel, it looks to us, for mrs. Clinton personally and legation that we are currently involved in in the litigation that we are currently involved in . It is getting worse, not better for mrs. Clinton and the media will try to move on saying it is all about politics as she run for presidency. Running for president should not make you immune for any serious accountability under law. That seems to be the way it works in washington and we are going to change that through our litigation. Running for high office does not place you above the law. And mrs. Clinton said line that, should learn that and the state department and the white house itself should start paying attention to the obligations of Public Interest as opposed to the political future of the democratic party, which is where i think i fear it is going. I just hope there is an honest man and the administration or an honest woman who says we are done and we are going to let all hang out and there is no harm in coming forward and being forthright to the courts and to investigators. But to continue the coverup which is ongoing in my view, that really shows you what were up against. If Congress Gets it at together and the Justice Department gets its act together, they would bring some of these folks before him or her and ask questions and allow us to ask questions that really could work wonders. We are prepared to work hard and we appreciate the work of paul at Judicial Watch and mr. Metcalf, who has tried to provide an honest analysis of what the legal issues are and what the facts are based on his experiencee. Daniel i believe in a good rule of law. Tom he is available at the Washington School of laws load site website. Joe has been doing humans work in this area has well. And i hope more people Pay Attention to his analysis. Congress needs to really refigure and restructure their investigations and how they go about conducting oversight because although we are happy to do it, it really is outrageous that we are doing the job of both the congress and the media just little old Judicial Watch taking on the 4 trillion dollar federal government. My gosh, we need the help in Congress Needs to start doing its job. We thank everyone for participating and you can learn more about this and check the scandal at Judicial Watch. Org. You can google joe and mr. Metcalf. What is your website, joe . You can google him and find out about their great work. Daniel the easiest way is to go on and google. My family favorite worksite which is because my daughter works if there can put in my last name, metcalfe with an e on the end. Host thank you for your participation in the Educational Panel today. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] on the next washington journal tighe journal, eric trager talks about the Arab League Military force. Also a look at a white house proposal to Fund Transportation programs at an estimated 487 billion over the next six years. Cq roll call reporter Kellie Mejdrich joins us. Next week at 9 p. M. Eastern, conversations with a few new members of congress. I knew my mom would be crying and my dad was proud. It was when my dad was 82 years old. He showed up to the capital. Usually walks with a cane. He showed up and he did not have his cane. I said dad do i need to send some buddy to the hotel to get your cane . He straightens up and says, im in the capital. I dont need a cane today. And he walked without his cane for the entire day. I know they were super proud. Five newest members of Congress Talk about their careers and personal lives and share insight about how things work on capitol hill. Join us for all five conversations each night at 9 00 eastern on cspan. Next, remarks from nsa director and head of u. S. Cyber command, admiral michael rogers. He was the keynote speaker at a recent Cyber Security summit in washington, d. C. The event was hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and electronic association. This runs 35 minutes. [applause]