Tom Fitton - Clean House: Exposing Our Government’s Secrets and Lies

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

The Corruption Chronicles: Obamas Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government

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First Threshold Editions hardcover edition August 2016

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by Jason Gabbert

Jacket photograph Karl R. Martin/Shutterstock

Author photograph by Joyce N. Boghosian

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fitton, Thomas, author.

Title: Clean house / Tom Fitton.

Description: New York : Threshold Editions, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016023471

Subjects: LCSH: Political corruptionUnited States. | Obama, Barack.

Classification: LCC JK2249 .F437 2016 | DDC 973.932dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023471

ISBN 978-1-5011-3704-4

ISBN 978-1-5011-3706-8 (ebook)

This is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of patriotic supporters who make all of our work possible.

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

JOHN ADAMS, 1765, DISSERTATION ON THE CANON AND FEUDAL LAW

J ohn Adams was keenly aware of the relationship between secrecy and corruption in government and the preservation of liberty. Many of the Founding Fathers understood the importance of transparency in a nations rulers. James Madison wrote that A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Thomas Jefferson said that If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.

Judicial Watch has always believed that knowing the characters and conduct of the individuals who serve in the government and ensuring that the public is informed about what its government is doing is crucial to preserving our great republic. That is why for over twenty-two years we have been the most active user of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, politics, and the law. We are the nations largest and most effective government watchdog group that works to advance the public interest.

Transparency is all about self-governance. If we dont know what the government is doing, how is that self-governance? How is that even a republic?

When we were founded in 1994, we used the FOIA open records law to root out corruption in the Clinton administration. During the Bush administration, we used it to combat that administrations penchant for improper secrecy. But the Bush administration pales in comparison to the Obama administration. Today, our government is bigger than ever, and also the most secretive in recent memory.

President Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration in history, but our experience over the eight years of his administration was that the executive branch and its federal agencies were black holes in terms of disclosure. President Obama and his minions made remarkable assertions of secrecy over everything from White House visitor logs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to Operation Fast and Furious and even the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden and the details of the Islamic burial ceremony used for one of the worst terrorist organizers of the modern age.

Judicial Watch filed well over three thousand FOIA requests with the Obama administration, many of which went unanswered. Our staff attorneys never had a day that wasnt hecticthey were forced to file and litigate more than 250 FOIA lawsuits in federal court. Getting the administration to comply with our requests for information and documents under FOIA was like pulling teeth. Many of these lawsuits were filed just to get a yes or no answer from the administration on whether they had any responsive records.

Administratively, federal agencies put up additional hurdles and stonewalled even the most basic FOIA requests. In many cases, we faced tough litigation fights, with Justice Department and administration attorneys and officials fighting hard to resist turning over records they were obligated under the law to disclose. And in many cases, like our fight to get former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons emails, the administration seems to have misled Judicial Watch and federal judges, claiming that records did not exist that actually did exist or not conducting the legally required searches for the information and documents we were requesting.

Unfortunately, congressional oversight is also sorely lackinglacking on all fronts. Congress is like a fire department that shows up after your house burns down and shouts fire. Even President Obama, flailing for an excuse to cover his own IRS bureaucrats massively suppressing his political opponents, suggested that the government was too big and he had no way of effectively monitoring his own agencies. Of course, that doesnt explain the misbehavior of the Justice Department under the presidents political appointees, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, in misleading the courts and resisting disclosure and compliance with federal law. But there have been numerous cases where Judicial Watch, a private citizens group, has succeeded in uncovering documents that were denied to Congress even when it was trying to conduct oversight.

Judicial Watch has been widely acknowledged to have been performing the oversight function that was the job of Congress. We heard from many members of the House of Representatives who were embarrassed that its committees and oversight had become a joke under former Speaker John Boehner. Judicial Watch had more success investigating the IRS, Benghazi, and the Clinton email scandals than any House Committee under Boehners direction (or lack of direction). Boehners willingness to fund rather than oppose Barack Obamas lawlessness was also one of the chief reasons for his forced resignation as the Speaker in September 2015.

The cavalier and obstructive attitude of the administration and its Justice Department was also demonstrated by the fact that agencies within the executive branch like the FBI have started refusing to comply with requests from the governments own inspectors general (IGs) to provide requested records, information, and