Judicial Watch: Obama ‘intended to leave no paper trail’

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Judicial Watch: Obama ‘intended to leave no paper trail’

http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/judicial-watch-obama-intended-to-leave-no-paper-trail-2008-03-26.html

By Klaus Marre
Posted: 03/26/08 01:01 PM

The president of a prominent watchdog group said Wednesday that he believes Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “intended to leave no paper trail” during his time in the Illinois Senate.

Judicial Watch, which has been seeking access to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) records from her time in the White House, argued Wednesday that the Illinois senator, who has criticized the former first lady for a lack of openness, has his own “records problem.”

“The more we learn about the Illinois Senator, the more obvious it becomes that he is anything but the ethically upright outsider he purports to be,” said Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch.

The group rose to prominence when it repeatedly took on former President Bill Clinton during his time in office. It also sought records from the Bush administration regarding Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.

In a statement, Fitton noted that his group has sought access to Obama’s records as a state senator and questioned whether the presidential candidate has been forthcoming with regard to what happened to those documents.

However, he said that “nobody knows where they are, if they exist at all” and claimed that “Obama’s story keeps changing.”

The senator’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fitton argues that Obama’s public accounts of what happened to his records do not mesh with information from the Illinois Office of the Secretary of State. He added that the Judicial Watch investigation “suggests” that the senator could have had his records archived in a way that would grant the public access to them.

“It appears that Obama never kept records of his time in the Illinois state legislature, or he discarded them,” Fitton stated. “Either way, he clearly intended to leave no paper trail.”

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