By Larry Klayman, Chairman and General Counsel
Freedom Watch
January 3, 2018
- Larry Klayman conceived of and founded Judicial Watch, Inc., on July 29, 1994, as an anti-corruption watchdog dedicated to investigating and prosecuting corruption in government and our legal system. At the time, Klayman had been a trial lawyer of 17 years, having been a prosecutor in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (Justice), where he served on the trial team that broke up AT&T, creating competition in the telecommunications industry. He also represented several agencies, such as the FTC, FDA, CPSC, NTSB and FRB.
- In the years that followed, Klayman and Judicial Watch, out of necessity, trained their sights primarily on the corrupt administration of Bill and Hillary Clinton. As a result, Klayman is the only lawyer in American history to have a court rule that a sitting president, Bill Clinton, had committed a crime.
- Around 1996, Klayman had hired Tom Fitton as his part time assistant, who at the time misrepresented to Klayman that he had graduated with a B.A. from George Washington University. Klayman discovered this falsity as he was leaving Judicial Watch to run for the U.S. Senate in Florida in 2003-2004.
- Upon leaving Judicial Watch, Klayman therefore urged Fitton, who along with the other directors who were then in control of Judicial Watch, to hire a new chairman and general counsel, such as former congressman Bob Barr, who Klayman had worked with to lead the impeachment effort against President Clinton, as Fitton was not a lawyer and had not even graduated from a university. Klayman strongly believed that the watchdog needed a distinguished and experienced lawyer to lead the organization. Fitton and the other directors did not do this and to this day Judicial Watch has no chairman or general counsel who has considerable experience on how to try cases. Instead, Fitton took control as president of Judicial Watch for this own benefit and self-aggrandizement.
- In 2009, Klayman published his auto-biography, “Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment!”, which chronicles the reasons for and rise of Judicial Watch and his his personal accomplishments. It can be purchased online from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and most booksellers. A review of the book by Dr. Richard Sweir titled “One Man Tea Party,” in “Red State,” praised Klayman: “Long before there was a Tea Party, Glen Beck 912 movement, 13 Patriots and thousands of others, there was Larry Klayman. Larry believes it is more important to be virtuous than be liked. Larry believes there is an ultimate right and wrong.” See www.freedomwatchusa.org.
- In 2005 and 2006, Klayman participated in legal actions, not just over the alleged breach of his severance agreement when Klayman left Judicial Watch to run for the U.S. Senate in Florida, Klayman’s home state, but also various fundraising abuses, such as the failure to use donor funds to purchase a building for the organization, which Judicial Watch had promised to donors it would do before Klayman left. To date, about 15 years and a decade and one half later, Fitton and the other directors have not purchased the building and have not properly informed donors that they kept their monies, over $1.4 million dollars in contributions, which were not used for this dedicated purpose.
- In addition, after Klayman left Judicial Watch, Fitton and the other directors ”abandoned” a client, Peter Paul, who had put on the “Hollywood Tribute to Bill Clinton” and who had been cooperating with the Bush Justice Department in an investigation proving that Hillary Clinton had obtained nearly $2 million dollars in illegal campaign contributions when she ran for the Senate in 2000. Peter was himself indicted and in part due to his abandonment by Fitton and the other directors, he was then convicted of crimes and did about 10 years in prison. Despite abandoning Paul, Fitton, the other directors and Judicial Watch continued to raise money from donors claiming that Paul was their client and had enough evidence on Hillary and Bill Clinton to put them in prison.
- After Klayman’s unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate, he formed Freedom Watch, Inc., which now does the work he used to do at Judicial Watch. He took the name Freedom Watch from the NBC hit drama series “West Wing,” which had created a character after him, Harry Klaypool of Freedom Watch, played by the actor John Diehl.
- In 2012, Fitton had ghostwritten a book about Judicial Watch, tilted “Corruption Chronicles.” In this book, Fitton wrote Klayman out of the history and accomplishments of Judicial Watch and claimed credit for himself.
- In 2014, Klayman sued Judicial Watch for defamation and obtained a jury verdict, which included punitive damages for this act of malice, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The jury found that Fitton and the other directors had either approved of or ratified on behalf of Judicial Watch a malicious false statement intended to severely harm Klayman.
- Klayman currently has pending other lawsuits against Fitton, the other directors and Judicial Watch as they continue to try to harm Klayman, his family and his reputation, as they fear competition from Klayman and Freedom Watch.
- Today, Judicial Watch focuses mainly on obtaining documents from the government under Freedom of Information Act requests. As Fitton is not a lawyer, the mission of the organization was changed after Klayman left to primarily furthering “transparency in government.” Despite this, Fitton seems to pass himself off and create the appearance of himself as a lawyer in his commentary on the internet, social media, in speeches and cable news.
- Klayman and Freedom Watch, particularly since Klayman is a trial lawyer of 40 years’ experience, now does the heavy lifting with lawsuits that not only seek to uncover documents about government corruption, but more importantly also hard-hitting cases that seek to bring about justice.
- In just the last years, Klayman and Freedom Watch have enjoined the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Obama administration from unconstitutional spying on millions of Americans, and had courts, including the Supreme Court, rule that Obama’s amnesty for over 5 million aliens was illegal. Klayman and Freedom Watch are now bringing actual legal actions, not just obtaining documents, to have Robert Mueller removed as special counsel, as a result of criminal leaks by his conflicted staff of grand jury information, as well as other illegalities. Klayman also represents Cliven Bundy in his personal capacity with regard to the rancher’s political prosecution commenced under Obama former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and pushed by former corrupt Nevada Senator Harry Reid.
- Klayman also has a petition drive to have himself named as a second special counsel to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton over her illegal use of a private unsecure email server, and new emerging scandals known as Uranium One and Fusion GPS. He and Freedom Watch also have pending a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for wrongful death and defamation for the parents of Ty Woods and Sean Smith, who were murdered by terrorists at Benghazi. These are just a few of Klayman and Freedom Watch’s cases, which seek justice and not just documents, as is Judicial Watch’s current primary mission and activity under Fitton.
TO VIEW WHAT FREEDOM WATCH AND KLAYMAN ARE DOING TO BRING ABOUT JUSTICE GO TO WWW.FREEDOMWATCHUSA.ORG, AS WE ARE YOUR REAL JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.