JUDGE ACTS QUICKLY ON CLAIM
COMEY OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE, Hearing scheduled
Friday on lawsuit over buried investigation into surveillance, by Bob Unruh,
6/22/17, WND
A federal judge in Washington, D.C.,
has acted quickly in a case alleging fired FBI chief James Comey obstructed
justice by burying an investigation into the mass surveillance of Americans by
their government.
As
WND reported, whistleblower Dennis Montgomery
– who worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency, the Central
Intelligence Agency and the director of national intelligence – and his lawyer,
Larry Klayman of Freedom
Watch, filed a request for a
temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction late Monday.
By late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge
Richard Leon scheduled a status conference for Friday afternoon in his
Washington courtroom. The lawsuit seeks to stop the nation’s “intelligence
agencies” from continuing their “illegal and unconstitutional surveillance. ”Those
actions, according to Klayman, were confirmed again recently in a report
by Circa News.
The complaint also alleges Comey
obstructed justice by “suppressing if not burying an FBI investigation into
this illegal mass surveillance, which involved the chief justice of the Supreme
Court, other justices, 156 judges, President Trump and his associates before he
became president, and other prominent persons.”
Klayman said the “speed with which
Judge Leon set this hearing is commendable, as each day that the government
continues to conduct unconstitutional spying on Americans without probable
cause creates grave harm to not just the victims, but our republic.”
“Judge Leon previously preliminarily
enjoined the NSA on two previous occasions from what he ruled was an ‘almost
Orwellian’ invasion of privacy, and the defendants ignored his rulings,” he
continued. “I cannot believe he will be pleased about their brazen disregard
for the law and the Constitution yet again. As for Comey, he was encharged with
investigating this illegal conduct, when Montgomery came forward with proof
years ago, and he allegedly buried the investigation because, as the FISC court
revealed, the FBI was also conducting illegal surveillance under his direction.
Plaintiffs are also asking the court to preserve this evidence, which
Montgomery provided, with his testimony under oath, to the FBI and Comey.”
What
Montgomery and Klayman seek from the court is a
protection order preventing the destruction of evidence.
They are asking the court to prevent
the defendants, including Comey, the FBI and other federal officials mostly
under the Obama administration, from continuing “illegally and
unconstitutionally spying on and surveilling millions of Americans, including
plaintiffs, without probable cause or a warrant.”
Secondly, they are asking the court
to prevent the defendants from “destroying evidence of illegal and
unconstitutional spying” that Montgomery turned over the Comey based on the
promise it was going to be investigated.
These objectives can be reached with
a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, they explain. The
promised “investigation” was buried by Comey, and the evidence now is
endangered, they allege.
Defendants in the case include
Comey, who famously took with him government records when he was fired recently
by President Trump, then turned them over to a friend with instructions to leak
them to the media to instigate interest in a special prosecutor over claims of
links between the Trump campaign and Russia – an investigation that to date has
yielded no evidence. Other defendants are the FBI, Michael Rogers, the NSA,
John Brennan, Mike Pompeo, the CIA, James Clapper, Dan Coats and Obama.
They were accused in the original
lawsuit, filed only a few weeks ago, of “illegally and unconstitutionally
spying on and surveilling millions of Americans, including plaintiffs, without
probable cause or a warrant, and … destroying evidence of illegal and
unconstitutional spying turned over to defendant Comey and the FBI by plaintiff
Montgomery.”
The defendants, the motion explains,
“have engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to illegally and unconstitutionally spy
on millions of Americans, including plaintiffs, without probable cause or a
warrant.” The motion alleges the illegal spying continues.
Klayman, in the motion, points out
that the same Washington court, in an earlier case, issued two preliminary
injunctions, including one that “bars the government from collecting … any
telephone metadata associated with these plaintiffs’ Verizon Business Network
Services accounts.”
The
new lawsuit alleges misbehavior by Comey
and others when Montgomery “was induced by Defendants Comey and the FBI and
made to turn over 47 hard drives of evidence of the aforementioned illegal,
unconstitutional activity, which hard drives alone are valued in excess of
$50,000.
“Indeed, counsel for Montgomery,
plaintiff Klayman, was told and assured by the former general counsel of the
FBI, James Baker, that defendant Comey was taking ‘hands on’ supervision and
conducting the FBI’s Montgomery investigation, given its importance.”
Much of the information was
classified and Klayman never saw it, “which is why the information was given to
defendant Comey and the FBI to begin with,” he explained.
“As a result, on or about December
21, 2015, plaintiff Montgomery interviewed under oath at the FBI field office
in the District of Columbia. There, over the course of an over three-hour
interview, recorded on video, with special agents Walter Giardina and William
Barnett, plaintiff Montgomery meticulously laid out the NSA, CIA, DNI’s, and
the other defendants’, particularly defendants Clapper and Brennan’s pattern
and practice of conducting illegal, unconstitutional surveillance against
millions of Americans, including prominent Americans such as the chief justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen,
and others such as Donald J. Trump …”
Klayman explained it is alleged that
Comey, “in concert with the other defendants,” buried an FBI investigation into
Montgomery’s whistleblower claims, essentially obstructing justice.
“Having asked the intelligence and
judiciary committees in Congress to investigate the alleged obstruction of
justice, and their having not taken action to date, Mr. Montgomery and I, on
behalf of ourselves, had to take matters into our own legal hands. This mass
surveillance, which threatens the privacy of all innocent Americans, must be
ordered to cease forthwith, as it endangers our democracy and our republic,”
Klayman said.
The latest move comes after Circa
News reported, according to Klayman, that the FBI “has illegally shared raw
intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other
constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government
documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances about how carefully it
handles warrantless spy data to avoid abuses or leaks.”
“Once-top secret U.S. intelligence
memos reviewed by Circa tell a different story, citing instances of ‘disregard’
for rules, inadequate training and ‘deficient’ oversight and even one case of
deliberately sharing spy data with a forbidden part.”
The
new motion contends Montgomery’s
testimony and evidence documented how the rogue federal officials conducted
surveillance and then covered it up.
The filing argues the plaintiffs are
entitled to the court’s protection, since courts previously have found that
even a minimal deprivation of constitutional rights is a major injury.
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