US Supreme Court Thwarts GOP Demand For Hillary Clinton Deposition

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On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request from the pro-Trump government watchdog group known as Judicial Watch to compel Hillary Clinton to sit for a deposition regarding her usage of a private email server while Secretary of State during the Obama years. Since 2012, when the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked in an incident that left four Americans dead, Republicans have gone on repeated frenzies as part of an effort to pin responsibility on Clinton and/ or her allies. Now, Trump appointees on the Supreme Court have stood in the way.

The Supreme Court order was unsigned, but the nine-member court currently has a conservative majority including three Trump appointees, so it’s not as though Judicial Watch was turned down by liberals. Judicial Watch was appealing an order from late last year from a federal appeals court that concluded that Clinton did not have to sit for a deposition according to Judicial Watch’s demands. Ex-President Donald Trump himself has clamored against Clinton over her usage of a private email server, insisting that she should face criminal prosecution, but no credible authority has ever determined over years of investigations that Trump was right in his claims against Clinton.

Tom Fitton, who leads Judicial Watch, responded to the Supreme Court order against his organization by complaining about “special treatment” that Clinton has supposedly received. As he petulantly put it:

‘Hillary Clinton ignored the law but received special protection from both the courts and law enforcement. For countless Americans, this double standard of justice has destroyed confidence in the fair administration of justice.’

Hillary Clinton is not the only political opponent of Donald Trump who the former president wished to see in jail. He has employed similar rhetoric against targets including ex-FBI Director James Comey, former President Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, among others. The rhetoric about punitively jailing political opponents is a symbol of the dangerous authoritarianism to which Trump has been consistently aligned.