Tom Fitton

The War at Judicial Watch

Submitted by Kyle on February 19, 2009 - 2:45pm

Every once in a while, Legal Times produces a lengthy article that pulls back the curtain and take a look behind the public rhetoric of some right-wing group to expose the sometimes sordid dealings that are going on internally.

Back in 2005, it published just such a piece about Jay Sekulow and his work at the American Center for Law and Justice yet, oddly, the article generated very little coverage and Sekulow continues to ply his trade at the ACLJ to this day.

With that in mind, I doubt that this new article about the in-fighting that it taking place at Judicial Watch will generate much coverage, though it certainly should as it contains a variety of allegations regarding financial improprieties and maritial infidelity, primarily on behalf of the organzation's founder Larry Klayman:

The quarrel stretches back to September 2003, when Klayman announced he was leaving Judicial Watch to stage a Senate campaign in Florida, which would ultimately end with him finishing last in the Republican primary. In his April 2006 complaint, Klayman alleged that before departing as chairman, he had discovered that [current Judicial Watch president Tom] Fitton had never earned a college degree. According to the complaint, Fitton allegedly promised to find a “distinguished and qualified” chairman to lead the group, but instead grabbed control of Judicial Watch and tried to push his former boss out of the public spotlight.

As he put it in an affidavit filed later in the case, Klayman believed that Fitton had done “everything he could to harm and financially weaken” Klayman to keep him from taking back command of the group. Among the complaint’s many allegations, Fitton had supposedly threatened media organizations with legal action to keep Klayman off the air, fired employees loyal to Klayman, and damaged his reputation with former clients. The complaint also contended that Judicial Watch had lied on its tax forms by claiming that Klayman owed it money.

All the while, the complaint alleged, the organization’s war chest under Fitton’s management shrunk to between $8 million and $9 million, down from about $20 million when Klayman left.

Judicial Watch shot back with a counterclaim accusing Klayman of failing to cover the debts he had accumulated as chairman and of violating the terms of his severance agreement. As part of a negotiated goodbye package, Judicial Watch had paid Klayman a total of $600,000, including $200,000 in return for signing a noncompete clause, according to the counterclaim. By founding Freedom Watch, Klayman had violated that part of the contract, the counterclaim stated. And by waging a public campaign to oust Judicial Watch’s current leadership—an effort that included letters to Judicial Watch donors, ads in major newspapers, and a Web site titled savingjudicialwatch.com—Klayman had also allegedly broken a clause barring him from disparaging the group, while infringing on a handful of trademarks along the way, the counterclaim alleged.

The June 2006 document also suggested a different reason for Klayman’s departure, stating that “Judicial Watch discovered circumstances that necessitated Klayman’s resignation from the organization.” The group made its meaning explicit in May 2007, when it filed an amended version of its counterclaim stating that Klayman had been forced to resign after admitting to an inappropriate relationship with a Judicial Watch staffer. Judicial Watch alleged that the relationship was about to come to light because of Klayman’s impending divorce, meaning he would no longer be able to serve as the head of a “pro-family” organization. The document also referenced accusations by his ex-wife, with whom Klayman is locked in a bitter child custody battle, that he had physically assaulted her.

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Right Already Plotting to Tie Obama Up in Court

Submitted by Kyle on December 18, 2008 - 4:34pm

One of the things that Republican politicians start complaining about during election cycles is "lawsuit abuse," the idea that trial lawyers are clogging the judicial system with pointless lawsuits in order to extort money from corporations and other public entities.

But for some reason, they never seem to complain about groups like Judicial Watch which, asPolitico notes, for many years existed almost solely for the purpose of harassing the Clinton administration, along with the Clintons themselves, and is dusting off its briefs now that Hillary Clinton is poised to become Secretary of State and preparing to get back to its incessant lawsuit-filing roots:

[Last week, Judicial Watch President Tom] Fitton announced his group was considering filing suit to prevent Hillary Clinton’s Foggy Bottom appointment, based on the Ineligibility Clause of the Constitution ... this latest saber-rattling over the secretary of state appointment calls to mind the habits of the [Larry] Klayman era. Thus, the Clinton world collectively took a heavy sigh last week as some Clintonites wondered aloud whether Hillary Clinton’s nomination and the cast of former Bill Clinton staffers in Obama’s White House could breathe new life into Judicial Watch.

...

As the group ponders its latest legal action, it still awaits a pending FEC complaint it filed back in April against the junior New York senator over a fundraising event where Elton John performed. The complaint alleged that John wasn’t permitted to help Clinton raise money because he is not a citizen of the United States. (Fitton notes that his organization had also filed a similar suit against John McCain, after he hosted a fundraising event in London. That case was dismissed.)

Also, last week a Judicial Watch investigator went down to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., to comb through papers that had been released on account of a Freedom of Information suit. The group expects more papers to be released in the future.

Fitton defends his group against charges that its litigation is excessive and political.

“We don’t file our lawsuits unless we think we’re going to win them and we’re pleased by the attention brought to our lawsuits,” Fitton says.

Jake Siewert, who served as Bill Clinton’s White House press secretary, tells Politico that they "initially underestimated the amount of damage that [Judicial Watch] could do through the press and nuisance lawsuits," which is a lesson I hope that he has imparted to the incoming White House staff, who'll not only have to deal with these Judicial Watch's lawsuits, but seemingly an avalanche of lawsuits from the conspiracy theorists who still refuse to accept that Barack Obama is qualified to become the next president.

As Alan Keyes' running mate, Wiley Drake, tells the OC Weekly, that they intend to make this issue dog the Obama administration "much like the Monica Lewinsky controversy dogged the rest of Bill Clinton’s presidency":

[I think] it will be even more so than the Lewinsky thing. I think it will dog him because one of our attorneys, Gary Kreep [of the United Justice Foundation] said we will do everything we can to fight this battle. If we win this case, we will keep him out of the White House. If we lose, Gary and his committee of lawyers, and many of us are supportive of this, if Mr. Obama is indeed inaugurated, we will file a lawsuit against the inauguration for being illegal and against the chief justice of the Supreme Court for swearing in a usurper. And then, typically on the first day of office, the president signs a bunch of bills. Every bill or document he signs, we will file a separate lawsuit. For every decision he makes, it’s gonna to be tied up in court.

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CPAC: Judiciary Activists Attack 'Undermedicated, Psychotic Lefties'

Submitted by Ezra on March 2, 2007 - 5:10pm

While yesterday’s segment at CPAC devoted to judicial nominees – featuring Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), who can count few fans at the event – was sparsely attended, even fewer showed up for today’s panel discussion on “judicial activism” instead of joining the crowds for Mike Huckabee and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA down the hall. Still, Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, and a man named Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation did their best to keep the attention of the handful of conference-goers on the subject that was one of the most vigorously touted at last year’s CPAC.

The enemies remained the same: judges who “legislate from the bench” and believe in a “living Constitution” which they “write … at will,” and senators who opposed some of Bush’s extreme nominations or who participated in the “Gang of 14” deal that halted the march toward the “nuclear option,” which would have forced through a rule change eliminating filibusters on those nominations. Fitton said of the filibustered nominees that “liberals thought they were too conservative, and yes, too Christian.” LaRue described as “undermedicated” and “psychotic” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with groups like People For the American Way that opposed confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

The judicial heroes were also familiar: Roberts and Alito, whose successful appointment LaRue called the “biggest grassroots victory” in years; Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Fitton described as a model for “humble judges” who “restrain themselves.” In addition, Kreep singled out Janice Rogers Brown, perhaps the most radical of Bush’s appellate nominees, for her success in getting on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to Kreep, Brown was targeted because of her race by the Democratic Party, “one of the most racist” groups in country, which he said opposes any minority who doesn’t “kiss their tuckuses” and “say ‘yessa massa.’”

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Facts Optional When It Come to Judges

Submitted by Kyle on November 29, 2006 - 9:47am

As we have noted before, there appears to be something about the issue of judicial nominations that makes the Right take leave of their senses.

For example, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough frets about the Democratic take-over of the Senate in January but insists that, despite the election results, “the American people elected George W. Bush in 2004 with the expectation that he would keep his campaign promise to nominate judges” who share the Right’s agenda regardless of which party controlled the Senate and is urging him to ignore calls to nominate any sort of “compromise” candidates.

To this end, Scarborough claims

When Clinton was president, there was no talk of compromise candidates. Our 42nd President put hard leftists like Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the bench.

The only thing that can be taken from this ridiculous claim is that Scarborough either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the facts because, as Senator Orrin Hatch recounted in his autobiography, at a time when Democrats controlled the Senate and he was merely the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, President Clinton still conferred with him when it came to potential nominees for the Supreme Court

Our conversation moved to other potential candidates. I asked whether he had considered Judge Stephen Breyer of the First Circuit Court of Appeals or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. President Clinton indicated he had heard Breyer’s name but had not thought about Judge Ginsberg.

I indicated I thought they would be confirmed easily. I knew them both and believed that, while liberal, they were highly honest and capable jurists and their confirmation would not embarrass the President. From my perspective, they were far better than the other likely candidates from a liberal Democrat administration.

In the end … he nominated Judge Ginsburg and Judge Breyer a year later, when Harry Blackmun retired from the Court. Both were confirmed with relative ease.

Scarborough is not the only one who seems oblivious to history, no matter how recent. In Human Events, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton writes that

Liberals in the Senate have turned the judicial confirmation process on its head, obstructing the President’s judicial nominees for political reasons. They even resorted to launching judicial filibusters, ignoring the constitutional directive to provide up-or-down votes on all judicial nominees. Why? Not because the nominees were unqualified. But rather because they didn’t like the nominees’ philosophy of judicial restraint.

As we have noted repeatedly, if folks on the Right are really concerned about judicial nominees being denied a vote because one or more senators don’t “like the nominees’ philosophy,” perhaps they can start hounding Sen. Sam Brownback to lift his hold on the nomination of Janet Neff - a hold that Brownback says is going to continue indefinitely