Demand renewed to grill Hillary about FBI files

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

A lawyer who has been working on the “Filegate” case since it was uncovered in the Clinton White House more than a decade ago is renewing his demand under court rules in Washington, D.C., to be allowed to grill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her handling of confidential FBI files.

Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch told WND Clinton should not be allowed “to skate out of the lawsuit which landed her in trouble during her husband’s former presidency.”

“Filegate” developed when President Clinton and Hillary Clinton were accused of violating the privacy rights of their perceived political enemies by wrongly accessing and misusing the FBI files of Reagan and first Bush administration staffers, among others.

“In an effort to discredit the women who charged President Clinton with sexual misconduct, personal files and papers were illegally obtained and released. The courts found, under the Privacy Act, that privacy of Linda Tripp and Kathleen Willey had been violated,” a report from Judicial Watch, which originally was involved in the case, said, citing just a few of the more than 900 files involved.

“As the country may remember, one of the Clintons’ techniques at keeping adversaries at bay was to illegally gather confidential and classified FBI files to use against these persons if they ever challenged the Clintons’ behavior in the White House,” Klayman wrote.

“Caught with their hands in the proverbial ‘cookie jar’ when the House Government Reform Committee was investigating Travelgate, another one of the Clinton capers to hire their friends for the White House travel office … I filed a class action lawsuit in D.C. federal court against Mrs. Clinton, the FBI and others to address this violation of privacy,” he wrote.

In response to Hillary Clinton’s request that she be granted a summary judgment in the long-running case, Klayman responded with a request for her to be deposed on the issues at hand.

A WND request submitted to Clinton’s State Department press office for comment on the case did not generate a response.

Klayman’s request went to Judge Royce Lamberth, who has presided over the case since the 1990s. The judge did not return a message left by WND seeking an explanation on the extended delays in the case.

“Now, as the globe trotting Secretary of State under the Obama regime, she wants out of the Filegate case, but Freedom Watch challenged Judge Lamberth to finally do his duty under the Rule of Law and allow the video deposition of Hillary Clinton to go forward,” Klayman wrote. “No defendant can be removed from a case without having to give testimony.

“We are confident that Judge Lamberth will now have to finally order the deposition,” Klayman said.

Klayman, representing Joseph Cate, wrote in his court filing that Clinton, “along with President Obama himself … has been elevated by the mainstream media.”

“But this court, which after all is a court of law, cannot and should not be swayed
by politics or its latent ‘correctness’ and finally has a job to do under the Rule of Law.
As it has correctly pointed out on the record a number of times, the findings of what
plaintiff views as a compromised OIC, which were in the context of criminal
proceedings, have no bearing on the allegations in this case under the Privacy Act and
related common law torts, which are civil in nature and where a much lower standard of
proof – a preponderance of the evidence – and different legal criteria apply,” Klayman submitted to the court.

“Over the last 12 years, plaintiff and his counsel repeatedly asked the court,
even though no such request should have been needed, for leave to depose the key
defendant in the case, Mrs. Clinton, even though as First Lady initially, she had no
standing as a government official, as this court has ruled,” he said.

“It is time for this court to exercise this courage, as the court cannot even consider
any motion for summary judgment by Mrs. Clinton until she submits to deposition, where
her demeanor can be assessed on videotape, and where she will have to give answers
uncoached by her esteemed counsel,” he wrote.

“Accordingly, Mrs. Clinton’s motion for summary judgment cannot and should not
proceed pursuant to Rule 56 (f) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as the motion is
premature before she is finally deposed. The time has finally come for her to account in
this civil case. She is ‘Citizen Clinton,’ not ‘Queen Hillary.’ To rule otherwise, would
be to establish the principle that Mrs. Clinton is above the law,” Klayman said.

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