Judicial Watch Releases Clinton Email Deposition Testimony of Karin Lang

Another deposition to dig through. I have to go offline for a while so I will not really be able to dig at this in detail until much later, but I figured you fine people here at ATS might be interested in finding out what there may be.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released the deposition transcript of Karin Lang, director of executive secretariat staff and designated representative for the State Department. The Lang transcript is available here. Lang was designated by the State Department as its 30(b)(6) witness. A 30(b)(6) witness is assigned to provide the agency’s testimony on the Clinton email issue.

Lang testified that key State Department federal recordkeeping officials did not know that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aide Huma Abedin were using non-state.gov email to conduct government business. She also testified that the State Department could not say whether Clinton or Abedin has turned over all emails in their possession that may be potentially responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of the Information Act (FOIA) request. Lang also said that it would not be reasonable to search all 70,000 State Department email accounts in order to retrieve Clinton’s emails. (Clinton has suggested that the State Department would have many of her emails because she sent most of them to State Department employees on their government accounts.)

And here is a link to the page wherein you can download the transcript.

JW v. State Karin Lang Deposition 01363

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Judicial Watch Announces the Schedule for Deposition Testimony in Clinton Email Lawsuit

Clinton IT aide ordered to produce immunity agreement

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Thanks, J&S.
Looking forward to your findings...as always.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

One more nail in the coffin? We can hope! Will check back later for details, no way I'd have time to peruse all of that right now.

The pdf is HORRIBLE to read.
The link to the deposition has the time stamp for everysentence.
Sometimes twice!

On top of that there is a 4 line spam message every 10 lines for www.deposomethingorother.com

Someone's gonna have to software edit that out.

b

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Getting in to it now before bedtime, there is a lot of blather about the various levels of bureaucracies that intertwine the federal government. I've also learned that people shift positions a lot working for Uncle Sam.

Anyway, getting in to the meat of the depo, I find a couple items of note:

Q Was Mrs. Clinton's e-mail searched in response to this FOIA request at that time, in November 2013?

A In November 2013, former Secretary Clinton's e-mails were not in the possession or control of the State Department so could not have been searched in response to a FOIA request.

Q Why were they not in the possession and control of the State Department?

A Secretary Clinton turned over her e-mails to the State Department in December of 2014.

State Department lawyers get real testy when they start dancing around the subject of when it was found out that they did not have possession of former Sectary Clinton's emails and then this person comes out and admits that no one in the records department thought Hillary used email for work related purposes at all.:

Q Sure. Is it -- did the Office of Correspondence and Records between that time period of January 2009 and February 2013, was it their belief that Mrs. Clinton did not use e-mail for work-related purposes?

A Yes.

Q Did that include -- was that -- does that include Mr. Finney?

A Yes.

Ah ha!

The party responsible for aking sure records were kept archived in order to find them later for FOIA and other purposes were told Hillary would not even have an email address:

Q Going back to where I think we left off questions. Between the time period of January 21st, 2009, and February 12th, 2014, why was the Office of Correspondence and Records not aware that Mrs. Clinton did use e-mail to -- for work-related purposes?

A Can you be more specific?

Q Sure. The Office of Correspondence and Records was in -- was responsible for processing, storing, archiving Mrs. Clinton's records; wasn't it?

A Yes.

Q So they would know what record systems or what systems and how Mrs. Clinton communicated; wouldn't they?

A The Secretary did not use a State.gov e-mail account.

Q Did the Office of Correspondence and Records during that time period know that Mrs. Clinton did not use a State.gov e-mail account?

A Yes.

Q How did they know that?

A When Mrs. -- when former Secretary Clinton came to the State Department in early 2009, as part of her transition the question was raised would she have a State.gov e-mail account, and the transition team advised that she would not. Like her predecessor, she would not have an e-mail account.

What follows is an attempt to find out why this was decided and who made the decision, no one could be pinpointed, but then there is this:

Q So at some point during Mrs. Clinton's tenure, the Office of Correspondence and Records asked S/ES-IRM whether Mrs. Clinton was using a State.gov e-mail account?

A Yes.

Q When did that take -- when did that happen?

A Initially the Office of Correspondence and Records was informed by S/ES-IRM that Secretary Clinton would not have an e-mail account.

Q When did that initial -- when were they initially informed?

A Sometime in the time frame of the end of 2008 to early 2009.

Q Do you know who within the Office of Correspondence and Records was informed of that?

A Clarence Finney.

Interesting:

Domain Name: CLINTONEMAIL.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 2
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: networksolutions.com...
Name Server: NS15.WORLDNIC.COM
Name Server: NS16.WORLDNIC.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited icann.org...
Status: clientTransferProhibited icann.org...
Status: clientUpdateProhibited icann.org...
Updated Date: 04-mar-2015
Creation Date: 13-jan-2009
Expiration Date: 13-jan-2017

whois.com

She new she would need email but she knew it would not be on official State Department systems.

Is Finney a Clinton crony? The reason I ask is this:

Q Sure. When IRM informed Mr. Finney that Mrs. Clinton would not be using a State.gov e-mail account, did Mr. Finney at that point or a subsequent point ask IRM if Mrs. Clinton was going to be using another e-mail -- a non-State.gov e-mail account for work-related purposes?

A No.

Q He did not ask, or you don't know if he asked? Sorry, I was just unclear on your answer.

A No, he did not ask.

Hillary outs herself on TV:

Q The S/ES-IRM.

Were there subsequent conversations related to Mrs. Clinton's -- whether or not Mrs. Clinton was using a State.gov e-mail account between S/ES-IRM and the Office of Correspondence and Records?

A Yes.

Q And when did those conversations or discussions take place?

A In -- when Mrs. Clinton's photo appeared in the media with her using -- appearing to use some sort of a mobile device, Clarence Finney checked with S/ES-IRM to confirm whether or not she still -- whether the answer was still that she did not have a State.gov e-mail account.

OK folks, that's all I can keep my eyes open up to now. I will pull out some more interesting excerpts tomorrow.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Good Info !!!

Exposes more lies from Hillary.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

Picking up where I left off, there are a few more tidbits which are of interest. Hillary and her, "can't someone else do it," policy of record keeping comes to the attention of the State Department:

Q Sure. While Mr. Finney -- while the office of correspondence and management was responding to FOIA requests, did they know, did someone within that office know that Mrs. Clinton's practice to preserve government e-mails was to do so by -- by e-mailing State Department employees on their State.gov e-mail account?

...

A No.

They didn't know, at the time, the Hillary & co. were pushing their record-keeping responsibility off on other people. As to why this did not occur to anyone:

Q Now that the State Department is aware that Mrs. Clinton has said that this was her practice, does the State Department believe that their searches in response to this FOIA request, either the initial search, during the initial time period, were sufficient?

...

Q What do you mean by that, if you could elaborate?

A The -- the supplemental searches were sufficient. They included a search of the former Secretary Clinton e-mail collection. The practice -- the way the State Department stores e-mail records is by custodian, by the employee who sent or received those e-mails. So in order to search, for example, for Secretary Clinton's e-mails, if they were stored in other custodians' electronic archives, it would not be possible to do that except by searching individual custodian by individual custodian, which would not be reasonably possible.

Q Why -- why would that not be reasonably possible?

A The department has 70,000 employees worldwide.

Only someone like Hillary could think that the above arrangement would be considered acceptable. After all, the rules only apply to 'the little people,' and something as paltry as proper record keeping does not rise to the level of importance someone like Hillary should be expected to consider.

Q To the State Department's knowledge, since the State Department received the FOIA request at issue in this case, has any potential responsive e-mails of Mrs. Clinton or Ms. Abedin been destroyed or lost?

A It's not possible to answer that question because on the date that the -- that the initial FOIA request was received, there were e-mails from former Secretary Clinton and Ms. Abedin that were not in the possession of the State Department. The State Department is not in a position to say whether e-mails subsequent to that -- e-mails that existed on that date were subsequently lost.

And why is it that the State Department could not know whether or not any emails related to this request (the FOIA request of former Secretary Clinton's records) were lost or destroyed?

Q Sure. When Judicial Watch filed its lawsuit and it was served on the department, did the department take any steps to ensure that any responsive e-mails of Mrs. Clinton or Ms. Abedin were not destroyed or lost?

A Again, as we stated earlier, at the time that the initial -- the case initially went into litigation, the department was not in possession or control of former Secretary Clinton's e-mail collection, so it could not have taken steps regarding those documents.

Oh, this is interesting, of a FOIA request comes in and someone's emails are determined to include records responsive to the request:

Q Okay. And if that determination was made that Ms. Abedin's e-mail records would be a potential source of potentially responsive records, where would that be tasked? The search -- the search itself, how would -- where would that be tasked?

...

A The general policy of the State Department is that current employees are asked to search their own e-mail records.

She is then asked several times if anyone had been asked about searching former Sectary Clinton's emails, and each time the answer was:

A No.

Then there are a lot of questions about training in regards to FOIA, all of which are objected to and not answered.

Eventually the witness is asked how they would know if all responsive records were turned over, the answer is:

A The State Department's only basis for -- for judging whether or not they've returned all potentially responsive records would be their statements on that subject.

In other words, we just have to take their (Clinton & co.) words for it that all records were turned over; no verification at all.

And an interesting objection when they are asking about letters sent to Clinton and Abedin in regards to records responsive to this request:

MS. WOLVERTON: I'm going to object to the line of questioning about this paragraph, based on the order entered on May 4th that specifically excludes from discovery information that concerns pending FBI or law-enforcement investigations, and on that basis instruct the witness not to answer questions about that paragraph.

They then go round and round about what is meant by the response to the request as to whether or not they actually meant that they had turned over all records which are potentially responsive to the request.

Then again:

Q Does the State Department know if Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin have turned over all records potentially responsive to the FOIA request at issue in this case?

A No. The department is relying on the representations of these former employees.

So we just have to take the word of Clinton, et al.
that's the highlights of the deposition. I didn't go through the exhibits, but don't think there will be anything surprising in them.

Lot's of CYA and insistence that we rely on the word of the Clinton machine that they were honest in their dealing with this FOIA request.