Secretary of State John Kerry and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
WASHINGTON – The government activist group Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State John Kerry to force him to turn over the emails of his predecessor, Hillary Clinton.
“Secretary Kerry is in cover-up mode for Hillary Clinton,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement Thursday.
“While John Kerry may have replaced Hillary Clinton at the State Department, he has proven that when it comes to complying with federal records and disclosure laws, he and Clinton are cut from the same corrupted cloth,” he added.
The suit was filed against Kerry in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel his compliance with the Federal Records Act.
It accuses Kerry of failing to take any action to recover emails that Clinton “and other U.S. Department of State employees unlawfully removed from the agency.”
Clinton used a secret, unsecured email server and private email accounts to conduct State Department business, and has claimed the system was secure.
But GOP presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina observed, “She had two Secret Service agents guarding the server. You know, we’re not worried about it getting stolen. We’re worried about getting hacked!”
Clinton and her advisers decided which emails were official government business and returned at least some of those 55,000 emails to the State Department in December 2014.
She claimed just 30,000 of those emails should be made public.
Clinton also admitted deleting 30,00 emails she deemed private.
The Judicial Watch lawsuit charges:
“The Clinton emails are agency records subject to the [Federal Records Act (FRA)] and the State Department’s failure to retain, manage, and search these agency records has compromised the Department’s retention of records that concern or relate to Secretary Clinton and other high level State Department officials who used non-”state.gov” email addresses.”
It also noted:
“Agencies may only dispose of records on terms approved by the Archivist of the United States, who is head of the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”). … This process is the exclusive procedure by which all federal records may be disposed of or destroyed.
“The FRA imposes a direct responsibility on an agency head to take steps to recover any records unlawfully removed.”
Judicial Watch said, before filing the lawsuit, it sent a letter to Kerry “notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the FRA.”
The watchdog group said the response for Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy on May 14 ignored demands that the secretary comply with the FRA.
That he didn’t comply, Judicial Watch charges, was an “an abuse of discretion” by Kerry “that has led to the continued withholding of official government records from the American people.”
Said Fitton, “Secretary Kerry is in a position to provide the transparency and accountability his predecessor so casually dismissed. However, those in the Obama administration will do whatever they can, including ignoring the law, to protect Clinton, her ‘legacy’ and her 2016 presidential prospects.”
“What a sad state of affairs it is when we must petition the courts to remind our leaders what the law is and that they are obligated to follow it.”
Follow Garth Kant @DCgarth
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