Secret Donor Behind Hillary Email Lawsuit Has Stalked Clintons For Decades

[KamaAina]

http://reverbpress.com/politics/revealed-secret-donor-behind-hillary-email-lawsuit-has-stalked-clintons-for-decades/

The lawsuit is filed by Judicial Watch, which masquerades thinly as a public watchdog. In fact, as its own literature makes abundantly clear, it is a right wing partisan hatchet organization that uses transparency laws and the unlimited ability to sue, to go on fishing expeditions against high-profile Democrats, as well as the occasional Republican who fails to toe the line. Judicial Watch was founded by Larry Klayman, whose recent work includes standing on the steps of the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. in 2013 addressing a crowd, calling for a “revolution … to demand that this president leave town, to put the Koran down…” as Southern Poverty Law reports. ...

Under Fitton, Judicial Watch’s hounding of Hillary Clinton entered its most aggressive phase since the 1990s on October 18th, 2012, about a month after the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and less than a month before the presidential election. Judicial Watch asked the US State Department to hand over “any and all” communications regarding “talking points” about the attack provided to Ambassador Susan Rice by the White House or “any federal agency.” The original sticking point of the Benghazi conspiracy theory, first advanced by the Mitt Romney campaign, was that the White House spun the nature of the attack to protect its national security narrative at the height of the election. The idea that Clinton ‘didn’t pick up the phone’ or issued a ‘stand down order’ evolved later, as Republicans continued to use the tragedy for political ends. Judicial Watch accused the State Department of not complying, and filed a FOIA suit....

The work of “a legal wild man intent on wallpapering the nation with subpoenas” is obviously not done for free. And it is who paid for it that is the most infuriating part of the story. Between 1997 and 2002, Judicial Watch received $8.7 million from Scaife family foundations. These are the largest grants funding Judicial Watch. The foundations were solely funded by Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife was a billionaire heir to the massive Mellon family fortune, derived from Mellon Bank and its array of holdings in the banking, energy, media, shipping and automotive industries....

Scaife’s money has been funding a conspiracy-theory witch hunt against the Clintons for nearly a quarter of a century. And now, with Judicial Watch’s relentless litigation on Scaife’s behalf, the billionaire is stalking Hillary Clinton from beyond the grave.

[Trust Buster]

1. Scaife has passed away but his foundation is still funding the effort.

[KoKo]

37. Bill Clinton gives the Euolgy at Richard Mellon-Scaife's Funeral--

Clinton eulogizes Scaife

By Kenneth P. Vogel--Politico

08/02/14 10:09 PM EDT

Bill Clinton on Saturday fondly memorialized one of the key financiers of what Hillary Clinton years ago deemed the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Speaking at a private memorial service in southwestern Pennsylvania for Richard Mellon Scaife, who died last month, Clinton recalled how, after his presidency, he built a “counterintuitive friendship” with the conservative billionaire, according to an account of the speech in one of the newspapers Scaife owned.

“He fought as hard as he could for what he believed, but he never thought he had to be blind or deaf” to other views, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review quotes Clinton saying of its former publisher. A spokesman for Clinton declined to comment.

--------------

Scaife, who inherited a fortune from the Mellon banking and oil empire, steered millions of dollars to groups that savagely attacked the Clintons throughout the 1990s. Scaife backed media outlets and nonprofits that pushed scandal after scandal that buffeted the Clinton administration — from the Whitewater real estate controversy to the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky sex scandals to raising doubts about the deaths of Clinton aides Vince Foster and Ron Brown.

Scaife confidant Christopher Ruddy, who rose to prominence on the Clinton scandal beat at the Tribune-Review, arranged Clinton’s appearance at Saturday’s memorial. Afterward, he acknowledged his former boss “was the bete noire of the Clinton administration during those years, sort of like what the Kochs are to the Obama administration today.”

But Scaife became enamored with Clinton’s post-presidential philanthropic work on AIDS in Africa and other issues, and a thaw began, said Ruddy, now CEO of the conservative media outlet Newsmax, in which Scaife was a minority shareholder.

Ruddy and the late former New York City Mayor Ed Koch helped broker a July 2007 meeting with Scaife and the former president in the Clinton Foundation’s Harlem office, and Scaife donated more than $100,000 to the foundation. Still, Scaife raised eyebrows by praising Hillary Clinton during her 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his Tribune-Review later endorsed her over Barack Obama ahead of the Pennsylvania primary.
-----
At Saturday’s memorial, which was held at the Ligonier, Pennsylvania, estate where Scaife grew up and which was attended by more than 100 employees of his media outlets, Clinton was presented with a photo of Hillary Clinton meeting with Scaife before the 2008 Pennsylvania primary.

And Ruddy predicted that her husband’s willingness to reach across the aisle will cause some major Republican donors who fought the Clinton administration alongside Scaife to be less hostile if Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016.

“There is a realization among high-level donors and sophisticated politicos on the Republican side that Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat who is pro-American business and is very strong on national security,” he said. “There is a sense that she and her husband share a similar worldview.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/bill-clinton-richard-mellon-scaife-eulogy-109670

[emulatorloo]

2. Did not know about the Mellon Scaife ties, thanks for posting.

[Octafish]

38. Origins of the Overclass

Last edited Wed Jun 1, 2016, 11:33 PM - Edit history (1)

by Steve Kangas

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.

SNIP...

How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"

SNIP...

Historically, the CIA and society’s elite have been one and the same people. This means that their interests and goals are one and the same as well. Perhaps the most frequent description of the intelligence community is the "old boy network," where members socialize, talk shop, conduct business and tap each other for favors well outside the formal halls of government.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

The author was found shot to death in a bathroom outside Scaife's offices.

[AzDar]

3. So how DUMB is Hillary to set up a private server, lie, and destroy emails if she KNOWS she's a ...

target? All of Hillary's 'wounds' are self-inflicted...

[Tarc]

7. That's a remarkable piece of victim-blaming there

[AzDar]

9. She's NOT a fucking VICTIM. She DID these things. If she can't stand up to scrutiny... or play by

the RULES, GTFO out of politics!

[grasswire]

13. agreed

the reckless and narcissistic behavior of the Clintons continues to get them in trouble, and then they pull the shield of VRWC to deflect attention.

Unforced errors. They do things they know will bring wrath and outrage and investigations. Over and over and over again.

If you can't keep your nose clean, you have no business representing DEMOCRATS.

[AzDar]

19. ...

[Tarc]

21. This is, at most, a minor transgression

That the Trumpys (and the Sanders fans, sadly) can use at political ammo. So yes, she is quite a victim of you and of them, for making a huge something out of this nothingburger.

[pnwmom]

42. +1 n/t

[840high]

22. Victim? Get real.

[Tarc]

32. Indeed

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2104525

[840high]

35. You must be young. I've been

following the Clintons since Arkansas.

[Tarc]

36. As have I

From trumped-up "hit lists" to Travelgate and everything in between, there are has always been a lot of anti-Clinton carping.

It used to only come from Republican circles...

[Maru Kitteh]

46. it still mostly does come from Republicans, but some of them wear hipster jeans

and carry a murse.

[Tarc]

48. Oh my, google image-searching for "murse" brings up some funny stuff

Last edited Thu Jun 2, 2016, 12:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Even a backpack would look less embarrassing.

[dsc]

39. how dare a woman walk in a short skirt down that alley

when she knows women were raped there?

[pnwmom]

41. The server was set up at the Clinton's house for Bill, and she came to State

already using it. Using a personal account was a mistake, but it was a mistake made by Colin Powell and 90 other staffers in the State Department, because the .gov system at the time was so clunky.

And she didn't destroy any work-related emails, while Powell deleted ALL of his when he left office.

[democrattotheend]

4. I don't take anything from Judicial Watch seriously

And I encourage my fellow Bernie supporters not to either. They are a right wing agenda organization that has repeatedly thrown nonsense at the Clintons, President Obama, and other Democrats. I don't recall seeing them go after Republicans for transparency.

[Maedhros]

8. Did you take this seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Watch#Bush_Administration

Judicial Watch's consistent investigations against Democratic figures have led to accusations that the group's lawsuits are focused on being politically motivated to help Republicans rather than enforce the law.[9] However, in July 2003 Judicial Watch joined the environmental organization Sierra Club in suing the George W. Bush administration for access to minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force.[10] After several years of legal wrangling, in May, 2005 an appeals court permitted the Energy Task Force's records to remain secret.[11][12] Judicial Watch called the decision "a defeat for open government" and Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch said the ruling fit the trend of increasing secrecy in the Bush administration.[13] Judicial Watch was involved in a similar legal dispute with Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002 when the group filed a shareholder lawsuit against Halliburton. The lawsuit, which accused Halliburton of accounting fraud, alleged that "when Mr. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton, he and other directors inflated revenue reports, boosting Halliburton's share price." [14] As reported by the Wall Street Journal the court filing claims the oil-field-services concern overstated revenue by a total of $445 million from 1999 through the end of 2001.[15]

In 2006 Judicial Watch sued the Secret Service to force the release of logs detailing convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's visits to the White House. This resulted in the release of a number of documents.[16]

I remember when liberals were really, really interested in Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings.

[TimPlo]

45. Certain party drones always scream bias

When a source does not show a clear bias towards them. Take other day when a bunch HRC drones called AP a Ring Wing news, one even said it was just Fox News for print media. And they did this because it had a article about how Clinton "misspoke" about her Email server and IG report was different.

[grasswire]

14. the case is under the supervision of a federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton.

The documents are depositions. Not opinion.

[840high]

23. Yes they did.

[VOX]

34. Well said!

JW's claim of being a "nonpartisan" entity is a colossal joke.

[djean111]

5. Another reason to not have a Clinton as president. Distracting crap.

The presidency should not be "given" out of sympathy.

I just don't like Hillary on the issues. No one pushed her into war and fracking and the TPP and cluster bombs and Third Way policies, etc. She stands for those things. Judicial Watch is not relevant.

[LuvLoogie]

11. The annoyingly distracting ghost of Richard Mellon Scaife thanks you.

[Maedhros]

6. I notice nobody criticized Judicial Watch for going after Bush...

But the point is irrelevant: evidence is evidence, illegal activity is illegal activity, regardless of who points it out.

[LuvLoogie]

10. The morally superior ghost of Richard Mellon Scaife thanks you.

[grasswire]

15. spam nt

[frylock]

26. Tell him he's welcome when you hold your next seance.

[840high]

24. I get daily updates from JW. I trust them.

[WhiteTara]

27. Judicial Watch went after Bush?

[oberliner]

28. They are a self-described right-wing conservative group

The person who runs it has been honored at CPAC.

[AtomicKitten]

12. She evaded FOIA for almost two years. Lawsuits demanding compliance are entirely reasonable.

[grasswire]

16. yes, that...if nothing else! nt

[Bill USA]

17. recommended!

[Autumn]

18. Hillary gave them ammunition. I seem to remember they also went after the Bush administration

for some reason or another.

[oberliner]

29. Do you seriously not know who Tom Fitton is?

Or what Judicial Watch is all about?

Hint: They think Bush was not conservative enough.

[Autumn]

30. Yes I know who he is. Doesn't change the fact that they went after Cheney and Delay

If I remember correctly, and we were tickled about it here at DU. Judicial Watch are all conservative activist assholes . I'm not a delicate flower and am capable of reading about their lawsuits without being brainwashed.

[oberliner]

31. They have a clear agenda

In no other circumstance are so many right-wing, conservatives used as legitimate source material here.

I am do not think that Breitbart and World Net Daily are going to brainwash anyone, either, but I don't expect to see those sources linked to here. Judicial Watch is in that category.

[Autumn]

33. Here's what I have learned. Everybody has a fucking agenda, not just RW assholes.

Like it or not there are right-wing conservatives, in fact that's about half of the politicians in this country and the biggest part of the MSM. What they do is going to be reported on their sites or on their news shows and I think intelligent people are capable of discussing the shit they do . If I read or see something I don't like, I move on I don't get freaked out.

[oberliner]

40. Fair enough

I am just making the observation that right-wing sources, normally reviled here, are being used more often of late by people who one would think are anything but right wing (namely some Bernie Sanders supporters).

[Autumn]

44. I think that's because no one else in the media is discussing it. They filed the FOIA

lawsuit and they are releasing the information. Those who are following this story who want to discuss it are going to post what they release on their site, it's not like Rachel Maddow or any Liberal talk show hosts is discussing it.

[okasha]

20. Several people seem to have missed

the fact that the Scaife family are not only banksters but heavily invested in energy production. The didn't sue to damage Cheyney et. alia. They wanted insider information from the committee that the committee wasn't giving them, possibly because of Cheyney's close ties to the rival Halliburton.

[Jitter65]

43. oh, yes. True that. nt

[yardwork]

25. Kick

[ucrdem]

47. VRWC hall of fame.

Or shame.