In a huge victory for Citizens United, a federal judge ruled on Friday that the State Department must turn over to the group “manifests from 47 overseas trips” that Hillary Clinton made while she was secretary of state.
As the New York Times noted, Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on behalf of Citizens United, which “requested the manifests last July through a Freedom of Information Act Request.”
The judge, according to the Times, ordered the State Department “to release the first batch of records by April 3, with more being released every two weeks; all the documents must be given to the group no later than Aug. 1.”
“Clearly, the State Department is not getting the benefit of the doubt from judges anymore,” David Bossie, president of Citizens United, said.
Citizens United “requested the flight manifests to examine whether Clinton Foundation donors had accompanied” Hillary Clinton on overseas trips.
“As Citizens United conducts pre-production research for the sequel to Hillary The Movie, the State Department has stonewalled our request for public records on official taxpayer-funded travel overseas,” Bossie said last year after filing the lawsuit. “The American people have a right to know who accompanied Secretary Clinton on these trips. Were there any big political contributors to previous or future Clinton campaigns on board? Were there any Clinton Foundation financial supporters on board? These are important questions that need to be answered, especially considering the allegations that arose regarding Commerce Department trade missions during the Clinton Administration in the 1990s.”
A National Journal report recently addressed the pay-to-play whispers that have dogged the Clinton Foundation, which has also accepted millions of dollars from repressive Middle Eastern regimes. A Clinton loyalist told National Journal that “the emails are a related but secondary scandal” and people should “follow the foundation money.”
“Without those emails, we may never be able to follow the money. Could that be why she hasn’t coughed up the server?” National Journal’s Ron Fournier asked.
After Clinton admitted this week that she deleted nearly 30,000 emails that were reportedly deemed to be “personal” and not “work-related” without anyone supposedly having even read them, there have been even more questions about whether any of those emails could expose Clinton’s cronyism.
As the Times noted, “Citizens United has a history of litigation involving projects designed to” unearth the truth about Hillary Clinton–“a lawsuit the group brought against the Federal Election Commission over its 2008 anti-Clinton documentary, ‘Hillary: The Movie,’ reached the Supreme Court and led to a 2010 decision that overhauled campaign finance rules.”
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