Brian tom fitton of Judicial Watch, your new book is called clean house. Why did you call it that . Tom we are looking forward. Theres been a lot of concern about the corruption and washington, d. C. , during the bushobama era, because i think that is way to think about it. People think the system is broken and there is inherent corruption and everything the government does. I tend to share that point of view and i think our success points a way forward. That there is a way of holding the government to account. Judicial watch is able to have these successes, in terms of getting government information and getting changes in the way government operates or the way politicians operate. And it is not all bad, and there are certain reforms and ways of approaching discussions of Public Policy in washington that ought to be thought about. We try to raise that in a forwardlooking way. You know, what struck me about working on the book is how irrelevant the election was to what we were doing and what was going to happen. Or we thought, what should happen over the neck few years. Over the next few years. Brian i want to show some video of you march 4, 1995 appearing on our callin show. Lets watch this. [begin video clip] when you pick up the morning tointeing piretands out . Nd h clirolepoo e turns that ident clintoded oes noenoughe to g pas not enime o to i he is going to send his wife. Hillary clinton. Brian 21 years later, you are still talking about Hillary Clinton. Can you tell us why you would be talking about her then, and what were you doing . Tom that was before i came to Judicial Watch in 1998. I was an analyst for a company, that was almost a precursor to fox in some respects. Newt gingrich had a tv show on, Arianna Huffington had a tv show. I was one of the analysts that he had brought on to bring a different perspective to discussions about politics. It seems like a different person at least physically, but boy, i still think the same way in some respects. Brian back in 1995, you were how long out of George Washington university . Tom 5, 6 years. Brian where did you get your interest . Where did you get your conservative views . Tom my folks have been conservative. I grew up around the issues generally. But working in the movement, i begin working for morton blackwell, who is a wellknown conservative activist who specializes on training young people how to be active irrespective of party. He wants conservatives to know how to figure out how to win. You kind of learn about policy the longer you are here, and how it is made, and you come in as younger person thinking, just because someone is a republican, they might be right, or just because they are a democrat, you might be wrong. You learn that is not the case. Policy issues are more nuanced, not necessarily conservative versus liberal. But you have to realize that not all republicans are there for the right reasons, and not all democrats are there for the right or even the roman reasons. Or even the wrong reasons. The longer i have been with Judicial Watch, the more i realize that partisans defend their side no matter what they do, and that has got to stop. I think that is why americans are so disaffected with congress. I do not think theyre worried congress is not doing enough, i think they think it is corrupt no matter which party is running it. Brian i have a quote from you. This will not surprise you. The quote is, the government does not want you to know what they are doing. That is a broad statement. What do you mean by the government . Tom the federal government is not terribly interested in complying with a key federal law, it is called the freedom of information act. It has been around since the late 1960s. They do not like telling you what you are up to. They do not like giving you the details. You see that most apparently with mrs. Clinton taking her emails with her when she left the state department, and not telling the American People that governmental material was in her system, and not sharing it as she should have under the law. In our experience at Judicial Watch, the government is doing more than ever and is less interested than ever and sharing what they are doing with the American People. They do not think they should be accountable. We are often suing agencies just to get an answer for our requests for information, as opposed to fighting over what they are giving or withholding. And of course, we know from the book in terms of the way forward, the freedom of information act only applies to the executive branch, not congress, not the judiciary. So brian you say in your book it does not apply to the white house. Tom the white house has been walled off from a lot of the transparency law. At least the foia requires responses within 20 days. The president ial record act will make those records available in the Chelsea Clinton administration. But you have to wait a long time for that to happen. Brian going back to your quote, the government does not want you to know what theyre doing when you say the government, how much of that is the top level, political appointees, versus the government bureaucrats that have a fulltime job for 30 years . Tom the bureaucrats process is in the ordinary course. Delaying comes from either politicized bureaucrats at senior levels or the schedule c appointees, the political appointees, the cabinet heads and their immediate staff. They can slow walk the release of information, and that is usually responsible for the delays in our experience. Brian if you are going to give an award to any Government Agency or person that you have worked with over the last 1998 since you have been on Judicial Watch, for responding to the freedom of information act positively, who would it be . Tom the state department used to be pretty darn good at freedom of information act responses. Brian when . Tom prior to mrs. Clinton coming into office. Brian did you notice a difference . Tom they were always slow, but they were thorough and professional in their responses. And it was a testament to the high quality of personnel at the state department. But since then, all bets are off. You are grading on a curve when you give an award to transparency. You know, the worst agency, in some respects the state department is terrible, but every withholding, every stalling tactic is defended by the department of justice. They are charged with enforcing the rule of law, and they defend the lawlessness on foia to the hilt, and you ask the Justice Department for documents directly, and they are as bad as it can get, in terms of unwillingness to provide information. Brian bring us uptodate on your organization how many people work there now . Tom a little less than 60. Brian how much money will you spend in 2016 . Tom our budget is around 34 million. Brian you said a few weeks ago that you have some 400,000 contributors. Do you still have the big ticket items that come from some people . Tom they publicly disclose their donations to us and they do support us. We do not have the type of donors that some groups have, where they have one or two or a few donors that could make or break them if they stopped giving. We have been blessed with widespread support. Obviously we have some donors who are more generous than others, given their capacities. We are in a wonderful situation, in terms of this Grassroots Army behind us that wants us to get to the bottom of what the government is up to. Brian i want to show you a picture. Over here on the screen, of it is around the time of richards death, and it is a picture of chris ready, who runs a newsmax out of florida. He used to write for a newspaper that richard owned. Explain this bizarre ok if people outside of here see, Richard Mellonscape funded the Clinton Project in arkansas with david brock, who went after bill clinton. And here is bill clinton, giving a eulogy at richards funeral. Help us out . Tom you would have to ask chris about how that worked, he is a friend of mine. It is astonishing that he was able that he had this rapprochement with mr. Clinton. I think he thought highly of the foundation and its efforts at least according to what he said and he supported them. But it is, strange bedfellows over time. People change. My view is the clintons never changed their stripes, and we are seeing evidence of that. Brian the public watches this process and here is Richard Mellon scaife, who is a multimillionaire or whatever, trying to give money to wipe out bill clinton in the 1990s, with david brock writing for a conservative publication. The american spectator. But now david brock is totally on the other side, paying money to sidney blumenthal, who you know about because you have gotten some of these emails published. Try to clear this up for the public. Tom the clintons think it is always about them, and it is not. The money is given in a way, he gives it to groups and groups do a variety of things. Like, Judicial Watch sued dick cheney. We got money from scaife to sue dick cheney. How do you and incorporate that . The way it works is, you have people who like the mission of an organization and support that mission with donations. Sometimes there are people who do not like the results of the activities of those organizations like bill and Hillary Clinton and they take, of course it is a vast rightwing conspiracy against me. The scaifeclinton relationship that had developed over the years shows that was not the case. He became friendly with mr. Clinton while continuing to support Judicial Watch, which was always critical of the clinton ethic. And, you know, i recall back in 2009, we were warning about what the problems were going to be with bringing mrs. Clinton into the Obama Administration. And you know, maybe president obama if you even paid attention to us, it was crocodile tears. I knew these clinton scandals were going to be, Obama Scandals over the longterm. Brian one of those ironies of organizations in this town, if mrs. Clinton is elected president , isnt that a positive for Judicial Watch, which will raise a lot more money to try to expose what she does . Tom i think our work is going to be significant as a result, and people should be supporting us no matter who is elect did president. I think the clinton email scandal is not going to go away, no matter who is elected. If mrs. Clinton thinks there will be no criminal investigation or no pressure for additional investigations if she is president , or anyone thinks that pressure will be eliminated or there will be no possibility of that happening if she is elected, they do not know the way the process works. In fact, there may be increased pressure for a criminal investigation, or at least a special prosecutor or independent investigation over the Clinton Foundation issues, if she is elected. These issues are not going away, whether mr. Trump is elected or whether mrs. Clinton is elected. There are republicans who think corruption goes away even if your candidate is put in. You know, we learned that from the bush administration. President bush came into office and said, i am not bill clinton, so why would anyone question us . And, you know, there is plenty good reason to question a government that spends as much money as it does, with all the temptations of corruption that arise from all that money. Brian i have in my hand sounds dramatic august 30, 2016 release from Judicial Watch. The headline is, Judicial Watch submits email questions to Hillary Clinton. Written answers under oath due september 29. You have 25 questions here. What is this . Tom this is discovery, evidence gathering in federal court. In one of our cases, we asked for information about the special Government Employee status of huma abedin, her then deputy chief of staff. Obviously, how the heck did that happen . We asked for government documents on that, and we got some documents, and they told us they had looked everywhere they could, and we shut the case down. Then the email story erupted, the case was reopened, which was extraordinary. Judge sullivan was interested in trying to figure out why was this system set up the way it was to thwart the freedom of information act. What was mrs. Clinton thinking . He granted us some discovery. We want to make sure all the records she took were searched, as they should have been. We deposed abedine and top officials at the state department and an official who took the fifth. We could not get the answers necessary for the discovery, so we asked the court to depose mrs. Clinton in person. He said, no, it is too onerous. There is Something Else you can do, which is to submit questions that she will have to respond to under oath in writing. Those are the questions. Brian reading your book, you mentioned a lot of judges. You found there were four judges here, who appointed them . You basically used in the court system in order to break some of this open but i want to put up on the screen again, a list. You can see judge rudolph, and obama appointee. A clinton appointee. Judge sullivan, you just mentioned him, eight clinton appointee. And royce lamberth, a clinton appointee. The reason i bring this up is, i know we are in the weeds little bit, but you have to go to these judges. What does it say that three out of these four judges were appointed by democrats, but they have looked fairly on what you are doing . Tom we have to put forward a legal case for the relief we are seeking. To force the government to give documents more quickly than they want to give them. We were before an obama appointee the other day to question why the state Department Said they needed 30 days to review 30 documents. Documents they found an new Clinton Emails that were just turned over to them by the fbi. The law still works. We complain a lot about what goes on in washington, but what a wonderful system we have, that Judicial Watch it does not matter your politics, we are a Nonprofit Group and we go into court and we are on equal footing in many respects with the federal government. And the resources they have are infinite. All of the lawyers they need. In they are still held to account to our requests under law. It is a wonderful, precious right we have. I can tell you there is no other country in the world where that is possible, to the extent it is available here. Nowhere else. Brian have you ever seen politics from a judge in this town . These judges are all here in washington, on the District Court here . Tom i think it is more prudence. Some judges are hesitant about bringing in highlevel politicians, because the judiciary in politics is something they may not like. The greater concern is, i think, the deference that federal judges show to the federal government. Despite the equal footing we have, the government has an outsized they are given too much deference often by federal judges on a transparency issues. With the clinton email scandal, all the goodwill they have had in the past, the agency has had, has been dissipated, so that deference is lessening, but it is still there. If the government comes in and makes a representation, even if we think it is bunk, it is just ingrained in the judges dna to take the government at its word. Too often. But that is changing slowly, especially since the gamesmanship we have had with the Obama Administration and clinton on the emails. Brian have you been in the room when huma abedin and others were deposed by your organization . Tom i was there for abedins deposition. I miss pagliaro knows deposition. We had seven depositions, and i was there for six of them. Brian what do you see in these people as you are sitting there . Is it done behind closed doors and with no recording . Tom there are public recordings. The judge in this case decided that the videotape was going to remain under seal, but the transcripts are available. There are a bunch of lawyers. We have a few lawyers, but only one lawyer who asked the questions. The government has typically three or four lawyers there, and the individual, especially the third parties not working for the government, they bring in their own attorneys. Someone like Sherron Mills or huma abedin will have attorneys there personally, so there are six or seven lawyers on the other side. You know, we have lawyers there. And i am attending as a client, not a lawyer. Brian as the principal sitting at the table, Sherron Mills or huma abedin, nervous . Tom it is intense proceeding. Brian where do they do it . Tom and offices, at the Judicial Watch or Justice Department. We might go over to the attorneys offices. A Conference Room in a you know, relatively nondescript location. And you know, it is interesting. They are regular people, and many respects. They are cordial. You know, contrary to what their political enemies think, these people are not in the positions they are because they are competent people, they are usually friendly and smart and cordial. You would be surprised how pleasant, at least on the surface, the interactions are. Brian to go back to this, 25 questions that you have asked Hillary Clinton in print. How does Something Like this come together . Let me just find a question and read it. So the audience can understand. Can you find these all online . Tom and they are all on our website, judicialwatch. Org. I went on facebook the other day and read them all on video, as another way o