John Bentel Deposition Scheduled
Bentel to be deposed October 24th.
Answers to interrogatories pushed back until October 13th.
Judicial Watch Press Release
Judicial Watch Deposition Testimony of Former State IT Official John Bentel in Clinton Email Lawsuit
Hillary Clinton Seeks Two Additional Weeks to Respond to Email Questions
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that it has scheduled the deposition of the John Bentel, the State Department’s former Director of Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-IRM”), the office that handles information technology for the Office of the Secretary. The deposition ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is scheduled for October 24 at 10am. Judicial Watch also announced today that Judicial Watch and Hillary Clinton’s attorneys agreed that Hillary Clinton would have two additional weeks – until October 13 — to produce written, sworn answers under oath to pending Judicial Watch questions.
Judicial Watch requested Bentel’s deposition as part of a request for additional discovery into the Clinton email matter.
In U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s August 19, 2016, ruling granting the Judicial Watch’s request, the judge cited significant discrepancies in Bentel previous statements on the Clinton non-state.gov email system:
The Court is persuaded that Mr. Bentel should be deposed because the record in this case appears to contradict his sworn testimony before the [House Select] Benghazi Committee. . . . Specifically, Mr. Bentel testified that he was not aware that Secretary Clinton’s email account was housed on a private server until media reports in 2015. . . . However, several emails indicate Mr. Bentel knew about the private server as early as 2009.
Judge Sullivan also wrote that Bentel should be deposed because a May, 2016 Inspector General’s report found:
Mr. Bentel told employees in his office that Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement had been approved by the State Department’s legal staff and also instructed his subordinates not to discuss the Secretary’s email again:
In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. . . . According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.
On August 30, Judicial Watch submitted questions to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning her email practices. Clinton’s answers, under oath, were due on September 29. Last week, Hillary Clinton requested from Judicial Watch two additional weeks to respond because of the unavailability of counsel and the press of campaign business, among other reasons. Her sworn answers are now due October 13. (Judge Sullivan ordered Clinton to answer the questions “by no later than thirty days thereafter….” )
The Bentel deposition and Clinton discovery questions arise in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit first filed in September 2013 seeking records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).
Judicial Watch has already taken the deposition testimony of seven Clinton aides and State Department officials.
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Comments
Wow! Paydirt! Bentel lied to Congress
and also did wrong by telling subordinates to STUF about the server -- all a matter of court record now!
I don't know exactly what law/regs Bentel broke in telling the staffers to shut up -- but I'm under the impression that his job duties included *following up* on such reports, not squelching them.
Thanks for all your good work!
(And btw: a current list of ongoing cases might be helpful abut now. There's Congressional (just the one?), the JW suit reported here -- but aren't there other court cases?)
The WIDE array of things out there
is beyond me, quite frankly - I was hoping Alligator Ed would make a chart for us about what's incoming at this point, but he laughed at the idea of a chart.
Judicial Watch has several active cases and has been filing more as recently as a couple weeks ago. Some of their cases are YEARS old now - the one currently hitting pay dirt are not recent.
There are media outlets which also have FOIA cases filed - we've seen some of what the AP has recently gotten out of their case(s).
Several House committees are demanding answers from a wide variety of folks, Clinton staff folks, service providers and there may be more.
We have no idea if DOJ/FBI is doing anything - they seem to be whistling and looking in the other direction. THEN AGAIN, we just learned that a second person has immunity from DOJ ... and I'm guessing the OTHER PRN guy may have it as well.
But beyond all the stuff *out there,* Clinton seems to do pretty well at creating regular unforced errors which remind people why her trustworthiness numbers have a hard time staying above water.
Don't forget that the DNC chair under Bill Clinton strongly suggested that the DNC firm up a potential process for replacing her should she step down from being nominee. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-health-replace-con...
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
The Wheels of Justice
At least the wheels of justice are turning, although it's slow. Thanks, MsGrin, for your posts and comments regarding these lawsuits. I know there are several lawsuits in the works concerning some of the anomalies that occurred during the 2016 Democratic primary. If Clinton is elected, there will likely be a reporting weekly on lawsuit XXX.
Thank you MsGrin...
I, for one, greatly appreciate all your work here. I'm so glad this site exists after so many years over at TOP.
A minor (very minor) quibble on this one for those of us that are terrible with names and such...
it would have helped me if your title more explicitly told what the story was about.
I almost didn't click because the name Bentel didn't ring any bells. Without overdoing it, a little parenthetical phrase reminding us out-of-the-loop name-forgetters who the story is about would help me. (and if it's just me, obviously ignore)...
Remembering names is not my thing. You can ask my spouse, she rescues me constantly.
Thanks again for your work.
Yes
My mornings have been crunched this week and I've had about 10 min to see what's new in the world and 5 min to slap up an essay to share.
John Bentel is a career employee, I believe, from Hillary's tenure at State who was approached by a small handful of employees asking about whether Clinton using non-State email was legit, and his response was that they should never bring it up again. After Judicial Watch learned that in other depositions, they asked to depose him, as well, and that was recently granted.
And that is all I remember off hand about Bental. Alligator Ed has must more intimate knowledge of all the State folks who've been involved (or mentioned) in the depositions.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Wasn't Bental the one who set up Bill's email server in 09?
If so, then he lied to congress when he stated that he only found out about it in 2015.
We have seen the directors of the CIA and the NSA lie to congress and get away with it, so what will happen if Bental is found guilty of perjury?
And isn't this latest hearing by congress about whether Hillary lied under oath during her hearing?
Any bets that if she is found to have lied to congress that she will be prosecuted?
Thanks for your work on this, MsGrin
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
Are you thinking of Pagliano and Cooper?
I was under the impression Bentel was/is a career employee at State.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
I enjoy your posts very much Ms. Grin.
I like to frolic in these weeds as much as you do, which I attribute to reading too many Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books in my youth plus having an excellent memory for minutia. I'm always thinking, "wait a minute, isn't that the same person who. . . ." .
Here's an interesting tidbit I read somewhere yesterday, that the FBI co-mingled a whole bunch of unclassified information along with the classified information they provided to the Intelligence Committee about Clinton's server. All that combined information is stored in a Congressional safe room where the Senators reviewing the information can't bring along any notebooks or anything that could store data and have to sign statements that they won't reveal anything that is revealed to them in that room, regardless of its classification. I think that's what's behind Chaffetz and Gowdy making the stink in the Oversight Committee about them wanting their own un-cherry picked unclassified FBI file, because they think the FBI is pulling a fast one by mixing all the stuff together. Hence the subpoena served on the FBI.
Other thing I would like to know more about is the whole thing about Clinton using Google servers - I am unclear if this is a whole new server of simply another form back-up but it seems like this is something that would have been revealed in either one or both of the immunized tech guys testimony. While Clinton and the rinky dink companies may be persuaded to wipe their servers, it would be a whole new gigantic kettle of fish if Google also deleted information off their server, which I would highly, highly doubt, but who knows? So, did the FBI subpoena Google for missing emails as well? If not, why not?
Judicial Watch should add questions about a Google server or back-up to the people they are still deposing. Citizens United is another group doing depositions, I believe. CREW had some FOIA requests that might have dredged up some interesting stuff, but if I'm not mistaken they were taken over by the Brock/Clinton media machine (things that make you go "hmm. . .")
Although, as the Oversight Committee has pointed out, they have no ability to prosecute, all they can do is make referrals which Justice can ignore or not ignore. Speaking of referrals, Elizabeth Warren just asked DOJ to explain how it is that none of the numerous criminal referrals made to Justice by the Committee investigating the financial meltdowns ever went any further. I think they made 14 criminal referrals involving actual named individuals that they felt had personal criminal culpability and yet, strangle enough - crickets from the DOJ.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
Lordy, you've got a million threads in that comment!
This is out of order...
My brain asks similar questions but does not have great retention (I've got some Swiss cheese upstairs).
Yeah, Brock de-fanged CREW when he took over, but JW has been running with some of the themes from what had been been CREW suits.
Interesting that Warren is asking those questions - I thought she jumped ship.
What was that oath from Harry Potter to use the Marauder's Map? Sounds like the FBI have been taking it:
I found an article on the Google servers: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/hillary-clinton-gmail-google-class...
Guess what? They're being cryptic:
BTW, a linked article to the above says State is transferring 50 employees from other parts of the organization to work on emails for release: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2015/09/judge-dubious-on-s...
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Thank you again, MsGrin
for continuing to publish more details on the Clinton emails. While I know some folks here are tired of reading about the Clintons, I think the bigger picture is extremely important and that is the depth of corruption in our government. The Clintons are the primary poster children for that corruption and I hope these revelations will bring them down. But this goes far beyond just the Clintons.
Usually in anything this far reaching, it is one small player or detail that can bring the whole house of cards down. While I am not sure Bentel is that person, he seems to be a key background player who might just be the one to crack the wall of secrecy that surrounds the Clinton pay to play scandal behind the emails.
Please keep up the good work you are doing on this.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy