Government

SCOTUS Boots Conservative Effort To Depose Clinton About Email Server Because OMG WHAT YEAR IS IT?

No more Buttery Males for Judicial Watch.

By Liz Dye on March 30, 2021 3:44 pm

Yesterday the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a D.C. Circuit ruling that barred Judicial Watch from deposing Hillary Clinton about her long-ago email server. Hosanna, 2016 is finally, finally over.

Hillary Clinton left the State Department in 2013, and in the intervening eight years, congressional and executive branch investigations have exhaustively plumbed the issue of her infamous email server. Nonetheless, the conservative group has been suing since 2014 seeking to depose her for what is certain to be smoking gun evidence of wrongdoing. If Tom Fitton can just get in a room with the former Secretary, then they’ll finally be able to LOCK HER UP for doing Benghazis with her emails… or something.

(Yeah, he always looks like that. Real men don’t need leg day. Or fiber.)

They got this close last March when U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Clinton to sit for questioning on her subjective motivation for using a private email server as part of Judicial Watch’s interminable FOIA suit against the State Department.

“When did [Secretary Clinton] first learn that State’s records management employees were unaware of the existence of her private server?” Judge Lambeth wondered. “And why did she think that using a private server to conduct State Department business was permissible under the law in the first place?”

The judge failed to explain how Clinton’s subjective understanding of the legality of her email setup in 2011 might be relevant to a FOIA search in 2020 — an omission the appeals court observed in its reversal last August.

“Here, the District Court ordered Secretary Clinton’s deposition primarily to probe her motives for using a private email server and her understanding of the State Department’s records-management obligations,” D.C. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins wrote. “However, neither of these topics is relevant to the only outstanding issue in this FOIA litigation – whether the State Department has conducted an adequate search for talking points provided to Ambassador Rice following the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, or for any communications or records related to those specific talking points.”

So Fitton squeezed into his best spandex dress shirt and stomped over to 1 First Street, confident that his pals Amy, Brett, Neil, Sam, and Clarence would put the situation to rights. Sadly, no.

The case was buried deep in the Certiorari Denied section of yesterday’s orders list, with nary a dissent registered from the conservative stalwarts who likely owe their job to a rightwing media sphere which worked so hard to make Hillary Clinton’s stupid emails seem like the crime of the century.

But Tom Fitton knows who is to blame, and it is the Deep State.

Hillary Clinton ignored the law but received special protection from both the courts and law enforcement. For countless Americans, this double standard of justice has destroyed confidence in the fair administration of justice. Americans would never have known about Hillary Clinton’s email and related pay for play scandals but for Judicial Watch’s diligence. We expect that the Biden State and Justice Departments will continue to protect her and cover up their own misconduct as we press for additional accountability through the courts.

The statement appeared on Judicial Watch’s website, alongside fulsome praise for the group’s peerless victory in Judge Lamberth’s courtroom. The appellate reversal was not mentioned.

Thus ends #ClintonBodyCountGhazigate, the biggest scandal the United States has ever known. Not with a bang, but with a whine … followed by 10,000 bicep curls and a Newsmax hit.

It’s a brave new world.

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.