The Hillary Riddle Begins to Unravel

The Hillary Riddle Begins to Unravel

on Wed, 19 Mar 2014

Winston Churchill once said that Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” So is anything even remotely having to do with Bill and Hillary Clinton. And just as with the Russians, that is intentionally so. The Clintons go to great lengths to cover-up their cover-ups. And that’s why Judicial Watch goes to equally great lengths to expose the truth. It is fair to say that we have been battling Clinton corruption for all of our two decades. The recent partial release of their Clinton Presidential Library records provides a revealing case in point. 

On February 28, after years of critical news stories and Judicial Watch lawsuits (and the threat of Judicial Watch lawsuits), the Clintons finally released their latest batch of documents from the Clinton Library. About 4,000 to 5,000 pages were handed out, but as Politico reported at the time:

About 33,000 pages of records withheld as confidential advice to President Bill Clinton or information about candidates for appointments to federal office, were still unavailable to the public even though the legal basis to withhold them under the Presidential Records Act ran out in January 2013—12 years after Clinton left office. Some of the records come from then first lady Hillary Clinton's office and include advice given to her by aides.

On February 26, just two days before the Clintons finally relinquished the 4,000 to 5,000 pages of documents, Judicial Watch had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the entire 33,000 pages. And now we know the Obama administration slow-rolled these documents out. The Presidential Records Act is supposed to be about transparency, but this latest game shows the Clinton gang and the Obama administration have turned this transparency law into a secrecy law. But this is a bipartisan problem, as I recently told Newsweekmagazine:

You have the club of presidents who are uninterested in making the documents available – every delay that happens in the Obama administration, they kind of expect the same from the next administration. So they take care of each other. We got stalled through the entire Bush administration on Clinton records and I suspect the Bush administration would be happy for a similar stall when it comes up for their time.

Judicial Watch has been battling for some of this material for years. JW filed our first FOIA request with the Clinton Library in 2006. And it was not until October 2013, after seven years of litigation, that we finally obtained more than 57,000 pages of previously withheld documents. They revealed formerly undisclosed information about the National Taskforce on Health Care Reform, a “cabinet-level” taskforce chaired by Hillary Clinton during the first term of the Bill Clinton presidency. Earlier, in January 2008, we released a smaller batch of internal Clinton Library records revealing that even Clinton cronies considered the Hillary’s Health Care Task Force a "secret cabal of Washington policy 'wonks'" engaged in "choking off information" from the public.

That may help explain why the Clinton cover-ups never seem to end. The simple truth is that the Clinton administration was rife with secrecy and corruption, so any new bit of information about what really went on behind closed doors may be important. And now, with Hillary Clinton taking aim at the White House, it may be all the more important for her to keep the public from ever seeing what is actually in the remaining 33,000 pages of internal records. Here is how I summed it all up in my interview with Newsweek:  

"Those are the really juicy records, those are the records people are going to have a great interest in," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, the right-leaning group that has turned to the courts to seek the release of multiple batches of documents related to the Clintons. "In my view, the public information about the lawlessness of the Clinton Administration is already pretty harmful...certainly details of that aren't going to be helpful."

Judicial Watch sent the FOIA request to the Clinton Library on Wednesday, February 26, and we have the option to file suit in court soon. If we don’t receive all the material signed, sealed, and delivered by that date, you can be assured that is an option we will exercise.