Judicial Watch announced today that newly revealed testimony from the Obama State Department under court order directly ties Hillary Clinton, for the first time, to the now-debunked Benghazi talking points used by United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice to claim that the attack was the result of a “spontaneous protest” gone awry. The Obama administration also sent false talking points about the attack to Congress. The State Department is refusing to divulge the contents of the email, citing a discretionary “deliberative process” privilege.
Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit in July 2014 seeking records related to the drafting and use of the talking points (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). The lawsuit sought records specifically from Hillary Clinton and her top State Department staff about the Benghazi talking points scandal:
Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency
The litigation forced the State Department to request government-related emails from former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, and senior aide Jake Sullivan. Sullivan and Mills provided documents to the State Department responsive to Judicial Watch’s request on June 26. Abedin has yet to comply with the request from State in Judicial Watch’s case.
One of the documents identified by the State Department from Sullivan includes an email chain from September 29, 2012, which discussed the talking points, and was originally included in the 55,000 pages of documents Clinton provided to the State Department. The initial email was sent to Clinton’s secret email account and to Mills, while the follow-up was sent by Mills to Sullivan and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications Philippe Reines.
However, an unnamed agency staffer initially determined at an unknown time that a “talking points” email was not relevant to Judicial Watch’s request for emails about the Benghazi “talking points.”























