 |
|
| Email this article | Printer friendly page |
| For Immediate Release | |
| Apr 28, 2000 | Contact: Press Office 202-646-5172 |
|
Judge to Order Expedited E-mail Search, Questions Clinton-Gore White House Motives Court to Only Temporarily Postpone Request for Evidentiary Hearing (Washington, DC) A federal court judge ruled yesterday that he would order the Clinton White House to begin searching e-mails and related evidence in the Filegate $90 million class-action lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch on behalf of those Republicans and others whose FBI files were illegally taken and misused by the Clinton White House. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a defendant in the lawsuit. The judge, the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, denied Clinton Administration efforts to derail discovery in the lawsuit by ordering the Clinton White House to come up with a plan to search other e-mails and other evidence that had been hidden from the Court and other investigators for nearly two years. Judge Lamberth said that he would be distrustful of Clinton White House experts' testimony on how long such a search would take, as they would have "political motives" to stall the search. He said the evidence must be produced quickly and ordered the Clinton-Gore White House to come up with an expeditious plan of action. Judge Lamberth made it clear he would not accept the 170 day timetable that the Clinton-Gore White House had tried to sell to Congress. Judge Lamberth also said that will only temporarily postpone considering Judicial Watch's request for contempt and evidentiary hearings to delve into the e-mail scandal, in which computer contractors for the Clinton White House were threatened with jail to keep potentially millions of e-mails hidden from the Court, the American people, and investigators. Judicial Watch believes that the Clinton Justice Department can't investigate itself and its political masters at the Clinton White-Gore House. Additionally, Robert Ray's Office of Independent Counsel's grand jury investigation of the matter is tainted because, among other fatal flaws, it is conducting an inquiry jointly with Clinton Department of Justice – one of the very entities it ought to be investigating. Judge Lamberth also said at the court hearing yesterday that he sought and received assurances from the Clinton-Gore Justice Department that Lee Radek, who is Bill Clinton's Chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Justice Department, was not involved in any criminal probes of the burgeoning Clinton-Gore White House e-mail scandal. |
|
