The clock is ticking:
Senior officials, including Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Jacob Sullivan, and FBI official E.W. Priestap, will now have to answer to Judicial Watch.
Fed Judge Authorizes Judicial Watch to Depose Ben Rhodes IN PERSON After He Defies Court Order to Answer Written Questions Under Oath
Recall
Federal Court orders discovery on Clinton E-Mails, Benghazi, Top Officials to Testify
back on January 16, 2019? Well, Ben Rhodes up and refused.
On Monday, a federal judge authorized conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to depose Obama’s speechwriter-turned-Iran-echo-chamber Ben Rhodes after he defied a court order to answer questions under oath.
Enter Mr. Rhodes: Who has a masters in fiction from NYU. An aspiring writer.
For some background on Rhodes a Foreign Policy post:
A stunning profile of Ben Rhodes – the asshole who is the Presidents foreign policy guru
The profile of one Ben Rhodes running in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is not unsympathetic, which makes it all the more devastating.
Perhaps the key sentence is this: “His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.”
Rhodes’ official title in the Obama administration was Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, and he played key roles in numerous foreign policy decisions. He took heat in 2016 when he boasted in a New York Times profile of creating an “echo chamber” to sell the Iran nuclear deal and mocked Washington, D.C., reporters.
Obama hack Ben Rhodes was ordered by Judge Royce Lamberth to answer questions under oath about the Benghazi scandal — but last week he defied the court order.
Even worse, the State Department and Justice Department were objecting to Judicial Watch who then sought an in-person interview with Mr. Rhodes – but Judicial Watch never backed down and won!
In January, Judicial Watch submitted a court-ordered discovery plan seeking depositions of Obama-era officials connected to the Benghazi scandal, including Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes.
The discovery plan stems from a December, 2018 ruling by Judge Royce Lamberth ordering the State Department and DOJ to submit discovery in three areas.
Judge Lamberth called Hillary Clinton’s use of the private email server “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”
Back in January we learn the breath-taking amount of info the Judge is allowing.
Via Judicial Watch:
Judicial Watch announced today that United States District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that discovery can begin in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers and Clinton aides will now be deposed under oath. Senior officials, including Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Jacob Sullivan, and FBI official E.W. Priestap, will now have to answer Judicial Watch’s written questions under oath.
The court rejected the DOJ and State Department’s objections to Judicial Watch’s court-ordered discovery plan. (The court, in ordering a discovery plan last month, ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)
Judicial Watch’s discovery will seek answers to:
- Whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system;
- whether the State Department’s efforts to settle this case beginning in late 2014 amounted to bad faith; and
- whether the State Department adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.
Discovery is scheduled to be completed within 120 days. The court will hold a post-discovery hearing to determine if Judicial Watch may also depose additional witnesses, including Clinton and her former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.
The Judicial Watch discovery plan was in response to a December 6, 2018, ruling by Judge Lamberth.
Incredibly, Justice Department attorneys admit in a filing opposing Judicial Watch’s limited discovery that “Counsel for State contacted the counsel of some third parties that Plaintiff originally included in its draft discovery proposal to obtain their client’s position on being deposed.”
This collusion occurred despite criticism from the Court that the DOJ engaged in “chicanery” to cover up misconduct and that career employees in the State and Justice Departments may have “colluded to scuttle public scrutiny of Clinton, skirt FOIA, and hoodwink this Court.”
The Judicial Watch piece is worth going over for the full read. A nice pick me up after yesterday.
‘The Final Year’ film exposes Obama team and their foreign policy naivety.
Ben Rhodes sputters incoherently at the end of “The Final Year,” the documentary about former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team and their diplomatic efforts throughout 2016.
He’s rendered speechless by an event he says wasn’t going to happen during the film: The election of Donald Trump.
Yet throughout the documentary, he’s also flummoxed by finding out Vladimir Putin isn’t out to promote what the U.S. thinks Russia’s interests are, the media’s response to his pronouncement that they were stupid rubes suckered into promoting the Iran nuclear deal, people who think climate change isn’t a bigger threat than Islamic terrorism, and at one point, getting into the back seat of a van.
These moments and more are captured in Greg Barker’s hagiographic film about Rhodes, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Obama himself as they circle the globe wondering why things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to be.
The Rough ‘Final Year’ of Ben Rhodes
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 