The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
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Fort Worth Tx, on Thursday a federal judge in Texas ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, imposing a dramatically accelerated schedule that should result in the release of all information within about eight months.
Continue reading Federal Judge Orders FDA to Speedup Release of Pfizer Vaccine Data
FEBRUARY 16, 2018
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Washington DC, Judicial Watch today announced that the FBI agreed to review 16,750 pages of records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the records for former FBI Director James Comey that were archived after he was dismissed. Judicial Watch came to this agreement with the FBI shortly after it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to obtain the Comey records (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00262)).
Judicial Watch discovered the cache of Comey records as a result of disclosures by the Justice Department in separate Judicial Watch litigation (here and here) to obtain the controversial “Comey memos” that allegedly memorialize conversations Comey had with President Trump.
There is significant public interest in Comey’s conduct and the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email and Russia collusion investigations and targeting of President (and candidate) Trump.
“The FBI has a terrible record of playing shell games with records – whether it be texts or memos by its disgraced former director James Comey,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Our lawsuit, we hope, will force the FBI to expedite the review and the release of the 16,750 pages of Comey documents. Open the files.”
February 13,2018
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Allendale NJ, according to Judicial Watch , “the more we learn about the FBI under Allendale native James Comey’s supervision the more we have reason to question the activities of the fired FBI Director. Because he has left a trail of suspicious activities in is wake, Comey now stands out as key figure in the Deep State’s illicit attempts to target President Trump.”
And it looks like the Deep State is protecting Comey still. We were forced to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for FBI records about former Director Comey’s book, which he signed to write in August 2017 and is set for publication in April 2018 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice, (No. 1:18-cv-00220)).
Our suit also seeks records of communications between Comey and the FBI prior to and regarding Comey’s controversial June 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Judicial Watch filed on January 31 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to respond to our August 14, 2017, FOIA request for:
All records of communications between the FBI and Comey prior to and regarding Comey’s testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on June 8, 2017.
All records of communications between the FBI and Comey relating to an upcoming book to be authored by Comey and published.
All records, including but not limited to forms completed by Comey, relating to the requirement for prepublication review by the FBI of any book to be authored by Comey with the intent to be published or otherwise publicly available.
Comey reportedly received an advance in excess of $2 million for his book, Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, reportedly set for publication on April 17th. Former FBI agents and officials intending to write books concerning their tenure are customarily required to submit the entire transcript for pre-publication review.
A month after President Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017, Comey provided highly controversial testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the circumstances that led to his dismissal, the ongoing investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illicit email server. During that testimony, Comey admitted he leaked information about his conversations with President Donald Trump in order to get a special prosecutor appointed. (In November, we filed a separate FOIA lawsuit against the Justice Department for its records about Comey’s testimony.)
Comey seems to have protected status for any misconduct, and we want to know if he had a special deal for his book from his friends in the FBI. The Deep State is in cover-up mode. The FBI, DOJ, and the Special Counsel are stonewalling our requests for Comey documents.
We have several other lawsuits pending for Comey-related records:
Two lawsuits (hereand here) seek specifically the “Comey memos” ((Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice(No. 1:17-cv-01189)) and (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:17-cv-01830));
Onelawsuit seeks metadata of the “Comey memos” and related records-management information ((Judicial Watch, Inc., v. U.S. Department of Justice(No. 17-cv-01520));
And anotherlawsuit seeks non-disclosure agreements pertaining to the handling, storage, protection, dissemination, and/or return of classified information signed by Comey ((Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-01624)).
On January 11, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg the FBI to turn over the “Comey memos” for in camera review by the court. In doing so, the court rejected arguments by the Sessions Justice Department to dismiss the lawsuits seeking the Comey information.
Unfortunately, on February 2, Boasberg ruled that the “Comey memos” would not be made public. Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation almost immediately appealed the ruling. We don’t intend to let up in our pursuit of the truth about the egregious conduct of the FBI’s former director.
New Hillary Clinton Email Confirms She Used Blackberry Against Security Advice
June 11, 2017
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Washington DC, What did the Russians know, and when did they know it? A question for today and President Trump? Actually we should be asking this about the years when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. The illicit system she cobbled together to send and receive emails was essentially transparent to the Russians and, for that matter, anyone else with a smidgen of technical expertise.
As the latest example of this, we have submitted new evidence to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan showing that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly used an unsecure BlackBerry device despite being warned by “security hawks” against doing so.
Judicial Watch obtained the email record in a response to a court order from our May 5, 2015, lawsuitagainst the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to our March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking: “All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.”
The new document brings the known total to date to at least 433 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
The email was sent to Susan Kennedy, presumably former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff. Kennedy wrote Clinton on March 7 2009: “Just in case you are still allowed to carry your blackberry, your friends are watching with great pride.” Clinton responded on March 8, 2009:
Against the advice of the security hawks, I still do carry my berry but am prohibited from using it in my office, where I spend most of my time when I’m not on a plane or in a “no coverage” country.
The email, uncovered by Judicial Watch and written by Clinton, demonstrates that she reviewed or was at least informed about a March 6, 2009, Information Memo from Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell to Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills in which he wrote that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.” [Emphasis added]
In a recent court filing pertaining to the pending motion to compel Clinton to answer interrogatory questions she refused to answer under oath, Judicial Watch argues that interrogatory 14 is particularly important:
Interrogatory 14 seeks to uncover why Secretary Clinton continued using a personal BlackBerry to conduct State Department business after being advised of the risks in doing so. This interrogatory is pertinent because Secretary Clinton’s personal BlackBerry was an integral part of the operation of the clintonemail.com system, a subject squarely within the scope of discovery. It was how she accessed her email. Without her personal BlackBerry, there likely would have been no clintonemail.com system because the Secretary did not use a desktop or laptop and a State Department BlackBerry would have linked to an official “state.gov” email account.
We submitted the questions to her under a court order on August 19, 2016, in a separate lawsuit.
Mrs. Clinton seemingly ignored the advice of “security hawks” and violated numerous laws related to the handling of classified material and government documents. The State Department sat on this document for 18 months. It is a smoking gun that shows why she must held accountable under criminal and civil law.
Clinton refused outright to answer questions about the creation of her email system; her decision to use the system despite warnings from State Department officials; and the basis for her claim that the State Department had “90-95%” of her emails.
In her responses sent to Judicial Watch and the court on October 13, 2016, Clinton refused to answer three questions and responded that she “does not recall” 20 times concerning her non-government clintonemail.com email system. She preceded her responses by eight “general objections” and two “objections to definitions.” The words “object” or “objection” appear 84 times throughout the 23-page document submitted to the court and Judicial Watch.
The Clinton responses to interrogatives were received in the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which was first filed in September 2013 seeking records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Clinton (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about theclintonemail.com system.
